46 CONCEPTIONS OF COLUMBUS 



tance made good : for it was always feigned to them 

 that the distances were less, so that the voyage might 

 not appear so long." Vignaud objects-'^ to this on 

 two grounds: first, it was not the Admiral's but the 

 pilot's business to keep the log, and there w^ere several 

 pilots in the fleet; second, to deceive the crew suffi- 

 ciently to reach Asia he would have to falsify the log 

 by over looo leagues. This latter objection has been 

 considered in the preceding study (p. 2^]) and will 

 not detain us here. i\s for the first objection, the 

 pilots themselves did not agree and, according to the 

 Journal at least, were distinctly inferior in ability to 

 Columbus, as witness the Journal under dates of 

 September 17, February 10, and February 15.21 Vig- 

 naud objects that this shows interpolations and pur- 

 poseful falsifications because Columbus could not 

 know the calculations of the pilots of the Kina and 

 Pinta. He overlooks the fact that conversation was 

 had from ship to ship on several occasions. Consid- 

 ering these facts it is under the aspect of reaching the 

 farthest west possible in the shortest space of time 

 possible that one should view^ both the choice of the 

 parallel of the Canaries as the one on which the voy- 

 age was made and the persistence with which Colum-" 

 bus stuck to that parallel. 



With regard to the whole enterprise Mgnaud has 

 sald:22 ''When he left Palos with his hardy compan- 

 ions he was not Imbued with any chimerical theory 



20 Vignaud, op. ciL, pp. 261-264. 



21 Markham, Journal, pp. 24, 173, and 178-179. 



22 Vignaud, op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 492-493. 



