Redmond if we might stop there before returning to Cock- 

 bumtown. To my surprise he told us that it was impossible 

 to reach it in the jeep, for there was no road part of the 

 way, and it would be necessary to take a boat across one 

 of the inland lakes. I wondered how the monument had 

 been built in the first place back in 1891, and why the 

 Chicago Herald had selected such an inaccessible location 

 for it. 



The commander left us beside a small marker near 

 Sea Diver's anchorage at Cockbumtown. It had evidently 

 been placed there by an enthusiastic yachtsman, for it 

 read, "Christopher Columbus made the first recorded 

 landing in the New World on this beach, Oct. 12, 1492. 

 Yawl Heloise, Feb. 25, 1951." 



"At least Columbus would have been able to get 

 ashore at this point," Captain Weems commented, "which 

 is more than you can say about the spot where they put 

 the other monument." 



Sea Diver appeared soon after without dropping an- 

 chor and the small boat was sent in to shore to pick us up. 

 Ed was eager to get under way immediately, for he 

 planned to anchor overnight off Cat island, the first step 

 on our way back to Nassau. 



Our tour of inspection was at an end. Our check of 

 the islands and routes which we had set out to examine 

 was complete. It remained now to digest the information 

 we had gathered and to try to reach a conclusion. 



There was no obvious answer. As we had realized 

 from the beginning, each one of the three theories we had 

 studied had its good points and also its discrepancies 

 when viewed from Columbus's Journal account. And as 

 there were no existing early charts to aid us, the chief 

 value of our voyage had been in comparing Columbus's 

 word pictures of the islands and waters he had visited 



324 Sea Diver 



