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Harrisse is the only one who makes this identification; and he finds some confirmation in later maps, which show thereabout an island, Triango or Triangulo, a name said by Las Casas to have been applied to Guanahani at a later day. There is no known map earlier than 1540 bearing this alternative name of Triango.
And at the break of day, at the time Columbus had predicted the day before, they saw from the largest ship the island which the Indians call Guanahani to the north of them. "And the first man to see the land, when day came, was Rodrigo of Triana, on the eleventh day of October, 1492." Nothing is more certain than that this was really on the twelfth.
In this map, of which the Baron de Humboldt gives an engraving, the islands as laid down agree completely with the bearings and distances given in the journal of Columbus, and establishes the identity of San Salvador, or Cat Island, and Guanahani. Washington Irving has given in his work against the hypotheses of the Turk's Island."
It was erected in no sentimental spirit, but for very practical purposes, and at a date when Watling's Island had not been identified with the Guanahani of Columbus's landfall; and yet of all the monuments that have been raised to him I can think of nothing more appropriate than this lonely tower that stands by day amid the bright sunshine in the track of the trade wind, and by night throws its powerful double flash every half-minute across the dark lonely sea.
After discovering Guanahani on October 12, 1492, and vainly searching for Japan among the Bahama Islands, he discovered Cuba and while skirting along the north shore of what he supposed to be the mainland heard of an island said to be rich in gold, lying to the east.
He knew that these islands lay to the south-east of Espanola, and on his second voyage he therefore took a course rather more southerly in order, to make them instead of Guanahani or Espanola. From the day they left Spain his ships had pleasant light airs from the east and north-east which wafted them steadily but slowly on their course.
And when it rose it showed the sea-weary mariners an island lying in the blue sea ahead of them: the island of Guanahani; San Salvador, as it was christened by Columbus; or, to give it its modern name, Watling's Island. During the night the ships had drifted a little with the current, and before the north-east wind.
From "Guanahani" he passed on to other islands of the same group, and thence to Hispaniola, Tortuga and Cuba. Returning to Spain in March 1493, he sailed again in September of the same year with seventeen vessels and 1500 persons, and this time keeping farther to the south, sighted Porto Rico and some of the Lesser Antilles, founded a colony on Hispaniola, and discovered Jamaica in 1494.
Thus to his first discovery called Guanahani by the natives, he gave the name of St Salvador or St Saviour, in honour of God who had delivered him from so many dangers, and had providentially pointed out the way for its discovery.
On Monday the 15th of October, he came to an island, seven leagues from St Salvador or Guanahani, which he named Santa Maria de la Conception , which stretches near fifty leagues in length between north and south; but the admiral ran along that side of it which is east and west, where the extent is only ten leagues.
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