NO. I COLUMBUS S LANDFALL WOLPER 5 



which I found I gave the name Saut Salvador, in remembrance of 

 his Heavenly Majesty, who marvelously hath given all this; the 

 Indians call it, 'Guanahani.' " 



On Columbus's second voyage to these parts, he carried with him 

 Don Juan Ponce de Leon 3 (Winsor, 1892), who was one of the first 

 explorers to sail to Guanahani, only 21 years after its discovery, with 

 his own caravels in 1513. Ponce de Leon had been sent from Puerto 

 Rico to find the Fountain of Youth at Bimini, but after passing 

 the Caicos, Yaguna, Amaguaya, and Manigua, he restored his ships 

 with mastic at Guanahani, bore northwest, and discovered Florida. 

 He took with him pilot Anton de Alaminos, who as a boy had also 

 been with Columbus. Before returning to Puerto Rico, Ponce de 

 Leon is said to have dispatched one of his caravels from Guanima 

 under Juan Perez de Ortubia with Anton de Alaminos to continue 

 the search for Bimini. It is reasonable to conclude from this descrip- 

 tion : Guanahani was not the Caicos ; Guanahani was not Guanima ; 

 Guanahani was remembered for its mastic. 4 



Guanahani and Guanima are shown as two separate islands on 

 many graphic documents (table 2) during the 16th, 17th, and 18th 

 centuries. It was Blaeu in his Atlas of 1635 who first called Guanima 

 "Guanahani." Blaeu made this mistake when he copied from the 

 DeBry engraving (fig. 1) of John White's original drawings. In 

 John Thornton's "New Chart of the Bahama Islands . . ." in his 

 Atlas Maritimus of 1700, he first called Guanahani "Watlins," 5 which 



3 Admiral Morison wrote that he located the statement of Ponce de Leon 

 calling at San Salvador in Herrera's Historia General, 1501, p. 312 — "On the 

 14th [March 1513] they made Guanahani, which is in 25° 40', where adere- 

 zaron [they cleansed or repaired] a ship to cross the windward gulf of the 

 Bahamas. This island Guanahani was the first which the Admiral Don Cristobal 

 Colon discovered, and where on his first voyage he disembarked and named it 

 San Salvador." 



4 Columbus had made several voyages to Chios (Xios) in Greece which was 

 known for its mastic. He knew how easily it grew, its use. and for how much 

 it sold to the bank of Genoa. At that time Chios (Xios) was under the 

 Genoese family, the Giustiniani, during three generations and, therefore, archi- 

 tecture, costumes, and culture were influenced by the Genoese from 1346 to 1566 

 and Genoese dress as late as 1690 (Argenti, 1953, ch. 6, p. 123). In The Letter of 

 Columbus (1493) on his first voyage, he wrote: "... besides spice and cot- 

 ton, as much as Their Highnesses shall command ; and gum mastic, as much 

 as they shall order shipped, and which, up to now, has been found only in 

 Greece, in the island of Chios, and the Seignory sell it for what it pleases." 



5 Helen Wallis, British Museum, has searched for information about Watling, 

 but could find only the John Thorton map on which was Watlin for the first 

 time. Nothing could be found of Watling. She suggested making inquiry at 



