36 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I48 



channel between the two islands, i.e., this Santa Maria and that big one, to 

 which I give the name Fernandina, I came upon a man alone in a dugout on his 

 way from Santa Maria to Fernandina, and he carried a bit of his bread that 

 would be about the size of your fist, and a calabash of water, and a lump of 

 bright red earth powdered and then kneaded, and some dry leaves which must 

 be something much valued among them, since they offered me some at San Sal- 

 vador as a gift. And he carried a basket of his own work in which he had a 

 string of glass beads and two blancas, by which I knew that he had come 

 from the island of San Salvador, had passed over to Santa Maria and was 

 going on to Fernandina . . . 



This Indian reached Fernandina 48 before Columbus went ashore 

 at daybreak on the 17th, and met him there. 



It takes the M. V. Drake 44 hours at 8^ knots to reach Rum Cay 

 ( Columbus's Santa Maria) and only 2>h hours to return to Guanahani- 

 San Salvador. Captain Storr claims that crossing the channel, "Cur- 

 rents are a bit northerly set." It also takes the M. V. Drake a good 

 part of the following day to reach the western point of the island, 

 which looks like a larger island to the west, because of the presence 

 of a wide bay that appears to separate the farthest part from the land. 



Columbus wrote that he thought the next island was 5 leagues away, 

 but found it to be 7, because the current detained him. Therefore, 

 having left San Salvador late in the afternoon of the 14th, he could 

 not have reached the next island before dark. Because of shoals, he 

 kept his distance. When day broke, he could not have landed and 

 would have had to sail from north to south, and then, as he wrote, 

 he followed the coast from east to west. 49 



On the 15th he saw what he thought was a larger island to the 

 west, but that point of Rum Cay is deceiving to the eye, owing to 

 the curve of the island, and it would have taken him that day to reach 

 its western tip. The Columbus Expedition, conducted by the writer, 

 has reconstructed this trip several times. We concluded that Colum- 

 bus would have had to wait until the next day, the 16th, before 

 he could explore, which is exactly what he did do. 



When Columbus left at noon that same day, he met an Indian in 

 a dugout in midchannel. He described the size of the bread carried 

 by the Indian as big as a fist, which is the size of cassava bread 

 or cake today, since it is baked on a grape leaf. The lump of bright 



48 This is an example of the speed of a dugout against a ship with sails. 

 Fernandina is now Long Island, where more elaborate wooden artifacts have 

 been found by Father Arnold, O.S.B. 



49 It is misleading to the reader for an investigator to figure mileage any other 

 way than that described by Columbus. 



