* Nicolas de Ovando, the governor of Hispaniola, who had succeeded Bobadilla.
* Somewhere on the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua,
† These accounts must refer to the Maya cities of Guatamala, the first places of high civilization of which the Spaniards heard.
* This clearly shows the extent of the Spaniards’ misunderstanding of the Indian signs or language. The Mayas had clothing and houses and waged war, but they had no horses and certainly no cannon or swords as the Spaniards understood them, since they did not know steel. So anxious was Columbus still to prove that he was in the neighbourhood of China or India that he accepted anything that contributed to this persistent and mistaken belief.
† From the Mediterranean coast of Spain to the Bay of Biscay.
‡ It has been argued from this passage that Columbus had heard reports of the Pacific and realized that there was another sea on the further side of the Maya country. But if this was so he would scarcely have referred to the river Ganges in his previous sentence.
* Columbus is anxious to defend Marinus of Tyre against Ptolemy, since according to Marinus’s theories the world was sufficiently small for Asia to lie in the region of the newly discovered America.
* Nombre de Dios.
† The Narrows, Escribanos or Port Scrivan.
‡ What wound is not clear. Las Casas speaks only of his gout. This reference has been used to substantiate the dubious story that Columbus served and was wounded in the Moorish wars.
* A chief.
† I take this to be Columbus’s meaning: that if they had had more experience in recognizing gold they would have brought a great deal more back and therefore the quantities must be very great.
* The district of Macaca in Cuba. It is difficult to understand by what logic Columbus still supposed that Cuba was part of the Asiatic mainland.
* It was actually entrusted to Diego Mendez, whose narrative follows. This letter contains many inaccuracies, attributable perhaps to Columbus’s exalted and exhausted state of mind
* Probably one of the Jardin de la Reina
† Apparently Puerto Rico. Columbus is said to have taken away all the charts.
* Bow-lines are ropes employed to keep the windward edges of the principal sails steady, and are only used when the wind is so unfavourable that the sails must be all sideways-braced, or close-hauled to the wind.
† The reference is to the Cosmographia of Pope Pius, descriptive of the Far East.
‡ Neither Las Casas nor Ferdinand Columbus suggests that the Admiral landed here. How he could have seen this tomb is consequently not clear. In writing of the magicians and the girls they are less dramatic than Columbus. They describe the girls as older and say nothing of the magic powders.
* II Chronicles ix, 13–17
† A reference to the Oraculum Turcicum of Joachin, Abbot of Flores, in Calabria, There is actually no reference to Spain in his prophecy.
‡ This refers to the Embassy sent by the Grand Khan to Pope Eugenius IV, mentioned by Toscanelli in the letter accompanying his chart. See Introduction, p. 12.
* This is the only mention of Coloumbus’s wish.
* It is not clear whether Columbus is making a general attack or thinking of one man in particular, perhaps Ojeda, whose discovery of the pearl fisheries of Margarita Island he resented.