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Updated: June 19, 2025
Here was land and green woods and crowds of strange folk. The mariners laughed, and the tears stood in their eyes and friends embraced. And they grew mightily respectful to the Admiral. So many were to go ashore in the first boat, and so many in the second. The Pinta and the Nina were lowering their boats.
There must be land or else the devil himself puts these signs in our way. Alonzo Pirzon, in the swift Pinta, kept ahead. Night came down. At ten the admiral, peer into the darkness, saw a light was it one of those phantom lights reported to dance over these waters? A faint, glimmering light! "Pero Gutierrez, come here. I see a light! Look that way!" "I see it too," said Pero.
At first the voyage was tranquil enough, though the adverse trade-winds, and the bad sailing of the Pinta, retarded the progress of both vessels.
Turn on heel around one's self, and mark never a start of land to break the rim of the vast sea bowl! Never a sail save those above us of the Santa Maria, or starboard or larboard, the Pinta and the Nina. The loneliness was vast and utter. We might fail here, sink here, die here, and indeed fail and sink and die alone!
From the Canary islands, on that supposition, the distance would be ten degrees less. The distance to Cipango, or Japan, would be much less. As it proved, the squadron had to make some stay at the Canaries. The rudder of the Pinta was disabled, and she proved leaky.
THE ships were the Consolacion, the Margarita, the Juana and the San Sebastian, all caravels and small ones, the Consolacion the largest and the flagship. The Margarita, that was the Adelantado's ship, sailed badly. There was something as wrong with her as had been with the Pinta when we started from Palos in '92. The men all told, crews and officers and adventurers, were less than two hundred.
The hour-glass, which was used to get the multiple for long distances, was of course the only portable time measurer available for Columbus. These, with a rough knowledge of astronomy, and the taking of the altitude of the polar star, were the only known means for ascertaining the position of his ship at sea. The first mishap occurred on Monday, August 6th, when the Pinta carried away her rudder.
In the fortress is the small family church of Santa Maria di Grotta Pinta. The Duke sent down word to his chaplain that the latter must marry him at once.
We have been engaged in the same trade for the most part ever since I joined the Pinta." "And a pretty profitable business your uncle must have found it," remarked Courtenay. "I don't know so much about that, senor," was the reply. "It used to be profitable enough at first, I believe, when el capitano had it all in his own hands.
A hundred and twenty, we came forth from church, and around us flowed the hundreds of Palos, men and women and children. All was red under a red sunset, the boats waiting to take us out to the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina. We marched to waterside. Priests and friars moved with us, singing loudly the hymn to the Virgin, Lady of all seamen. Great tears ran down Fray Juan Perez's checks.
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