204 THE OCEAN RIVER 



outfitted in the Niebla district of Andalusia in the close neigh- 

 borhood of the ancient seaport of Tartessos, where earlier 

 adventurers of an unknown race had traded into the wide 

 Atlantic two thousand years before Christ. This port was later 

 known as Tarshish, where King Solomon bought gold and apes 

 and ivory. 



The port of Palos in the Niebla region is only twenty-five 

 miles from the Portuguese border. Columbus, in outfitting 

 there, could use the best small seagoing vessels of his time, 

 the caravels of about fifty tons burden which had already 

 made voyages of some thousands of miles along the western 

 African coasts. They were lateen rigged and therefore could 

 point and make sail quickly, but were difficult to handle when 

 running before the wind. Columbus remedied this by a kind 

 of hermaphrodite rig, part square sail and part lateen. This 

 gave him handy, seaworthy craft that could make good time 

 in spite of their lumbering lines. 



Before we set forth with the mature Columbus into the 

 roots of the Ocean River west of the Canaries we should 

 record one more evidence of the wide experience of pilots and 

 navigators of his time. There isn't much actual historical mate- 

 rial here to justify more than a long surmise, but it tickles the 

 fancy. Unfortunately the Lisbon earthquake destroyed, for 

 all we know, other matter of this kind relative to Columbus as 

 a younger pilot. According to the notes of Ferdinand Colum- 

 bus regarding his father, this was written: 'T sailed in the 

 year 1477, in the month of February, a hundred leagues beyond 

 the island of Tile [Thule or Iceland], whose northern port is 

 in latitude 73° N. and not 63° as some would have it be; nor 

 does it lie on the meredian where Ptolemy says the west begins, 

 but much further west. And to this island, which is as big as 

 England, come English with their merchandise, especially 

 they of Bristol. And at the season when I was there the sea 

 was not frozen, but the tides were so great that in some places 



