72 CONCEPTIONS OF COLUMBUS 



and he did not wish to enter northern latitudes at 

 that season. 24 On this second voyage he had ex- 

 plored the southern coast of Cuba with the idea, ac- 

 cording to his friend Andres Bernaldez, curate of the 

 village of Los Palacios near Seville, of returning to 

 Europe around the southern coast of Asia and either 

 by the south of Africa or by the Red Sea and the 

 Mediterranean. 25 



On his fourth voyage he was completing the work 

 begun on the second. It being late in July, 1502, 

 when he reached the southern coast of Cuba, he ex- 

 pected the voyage to last over into the winter sea- 

 son; and indeed it was the following late summer 

 before it was completed. Under these circumstances, 

 he turned southwest for the India of the Ganges. In 

 so doing he was sailing from one point on the coast 

 of Asia to another point on the same coast by a short 

 cut, as is apparent from the map (PI. II). Pedro 

 de Ledesma, the chief pilot, testified under oath be- 

 fore the fiscal that Columbus ran southwest in search 

 of Asia.26 When the fleet sighted the coast of Hon- 

 duras it was recognized as the coast of Ciamba. 



24 Letter to Luis de Santangel dated Feb. 15, 1493. with postscript 

 of March 14, 1493, in Raccolta, Part 1, Vol. i, pp. 120-135, reference on 

 p. 121; also in Major, Select Letters, 2nd edit., pp. 1-18, reference on p. 3. 



23 Andres Bernaldez: Historia de los Reyes Catolicos D. Fernando y 

 Da. Isabel, 2 vols., Granada, 1856 (also Seville, 1870), Ch. 123, as 

 cited by Irving, op. cit., Book 7, Ch. 4, on the basis of the then still 

 unpublished work. 



26 Deposition of Pedro de Ledesma, Seville, Feb. 12, 1513: "e de alii 

 corrieron en sur sudueste en busca del Asya, que es en la tierra firme" 

 (Cesareo Fernandez Duro: De los pleitos de Colon, 2 vols., ^Madrid, 



