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Let us hear Columbus himself, as he recorded his first impression of Guanahani: "Further, it appeared to me that they were a very poor people, in everything. They all go naked as their mothers gave them birth, and the women also, although I only saw one of the latter who was very young, and all those whom I saw were young men, none more than thirty years of age.
The coral polyp seems to be doing only desultory work, and that mostly on the northeast or Atlantic side of the islands; everywhere else it has abandoned the field to the erosive action of the waves. Columbus said that Guanahani had abundance of water and a very large lagoon in the middle of it. He used the word laguna lagoon, not lago lake.
Again: Columbus, on the 20th of November, takes occasion to say that Guanahani was distant eight leagues from Isabella: whereas Turk's Island is thirty-five leagues from Great Inagua. Leaving Isabella, Columbus stood W. S. W. for the island of Cuba, and fell in with the Islas Arenas.
This island of St Mary of the Conception seems to have been what is now called Long-island, S.S.E. from St Salvador or Guanahani, now Cat-island. A small Portuguese coin worth less than twopence. Churchill. This sentence is quite inexplicable, and is assuredly erroneously translated.
The natives called it Guanahani; but should you look for it on your map you may not find it under either its native or its Spanish name, for there was no way, at that early date, of making an accurate map of the whole Bahama group, and the name San Salvador somehow became shifted in time to another island.
To the first of them I have given the name of our blest Savior, trusting in whose aid I had reached this and all the rest; but the Indians call it Guanahani . To each of the others also I gave a new name, ordering one to be called Sancta Maria de Concepcion, another Fernandina, another Hysabella, another Johana; and so with all the rest.
The, practical seaman in him carried him through the easiest part of his task, which was the actual sailing of his ships from Palos to Guanahani; Martin Alonso Pinzon could have done as much as that.
We had been occasionally employed, during our passage, in reading the old voyages of the Spaniards, and these moving lights recalled to our fancy those which Pedro Gutierrez, page of Queen Isabella, saw in the isle of Guanahani, on the memorable night of the discovery of the New World. On the 17th, in the morning, the horizon was foggy, and the sky slightly covered with vapour.
These Indians added that the continent was only ten days sail from this island; but, from a notion he had imbibed from the writings of Paul, a physician of Florence, and though he was in the right, it was not the land he imagined . Believing that the Indians would be afraid if many men were to land, he sent only two Spaniards on shore, along with one of the Guanahani Indians, and one belonging to Cuba who had come on board in a canoe.
Cipango, thought Columbus, and set sail to find it. They were in the group of islands between North and South America, which we call the Bahamas and the West Indies. The first island discovered the natives called Guanahani, but Columbus named it San Salvador "Holy Saviour." They sailed about among them, hunting for gold and Cipango; bartering with the astonished natives; observing the land.
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