PORTUGUESE AND SPANIARDS 71 



whole world. It was the year so he wrote in the journal 

 of the most famous voyage in history in which he "saw 

 the royal banners of your Highness placed on the towers of 

 the Alhambra," and " the Moorish King came forth from 

 the gates of the city to kiss the hands of your Highness," 

 that he received commission to search out the " Prince who 

 is called the Gran Can," and to convert him and the princes 

 and cities of India to the Christian Faith. He confidently 

 hoped to return, loaded with the riches of the East, to 

 complete the victory of Christ in Jerusalem. 



Thus, in the year of the conquest of Granada, Columbus 

 sailed forth West two thousand five hundred miles, and 

 something more. And he found the island which we call Columbus 

 Hayti, and believed that he had found either Cipango or *hatavt 

 Ophir. And he found a long coast, the Southern coast of was Cipango, 

 Cuba, and believed that he had found the coast of Cathay. 

 And the natives told him that they were visited by the 

 ships of the Gran Can. And he heard the expected stories 

 of men with one eye, and of men with dogs' noses who were 

 cannibals and drank the blood of their enemies, and he knew 

 that he was in the world of Marco Polo. And in another voy- 

 age, Southward, as he believed, of Cathay, he came to the 

 mouth of a huge river, the river Orinoco, which seemed to 

 him to prove the existence of a huge continent to the South 

 of Asia, like that which Mela and Ptolemy had drawn, and 

 Marco Polo and Ludovico Varthema had told of ; a con- 

 tinent which he (like Dante) believed culminated in a 

 mountain on the height of which was the Terrestrial 

 Paradise, the source of the great river whose tumultuous 

 outlet he had discovered. And in his last voyage he made 

 search for the Straits of Malacca, which should be some- 

 where between Cathay (Cuba) and the Great Land of the 

 South (South America) ; and he understood the natives 

 of the Isthmus of Panama to say that the strait was in fact 

 close by, and that, as he expected, it was thence but an 

 easy ten days' sail to the mouth of the Ganges. and that 



Most interesting to us was the discovery of the great South 

 land to the South, the land which we call South America, 

 The interpretation of the other discoveries seemed Continent. 



