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Updated: June 20, 2025
Just as on the voyage out every seaweed or fish or flying bird that he saw was hailed by him as a sign that land was near, so amid the beauty of this virgin world everything that he sees is taken to indicate either that he is close upon the track of the gold, or that he must be in Cipango, or that the natives will be easy to convert to Christianity.
The Pinzons meanwhile were having less trouble; for when their sailors wished to turn back because nothing had been found seven hundred and fifty leagues west of the Canaries, Martin Alonzo told them all the absurd tales he had read about Cipango, and promised them, if only they went ahead, that its wealth would make their fortune.
Only a scanty stock of provisions, they declared, prevented them from sailing along the coast as far as Cathay and Cipango. As it was they planted on the land a great cross with the flag of England and also the banner of St Mark, the patron saint of Cabot's city of Venice.
About the same time he sent out Ojedo with fifteen men to explore the country, and in particular to search out Cipango, about which he was so much mistaken. Ojedo travelled eight or ten leagues through an uninhabited country, and having passed a mountain, came to a beautiful plain full of Indian towns, where he was well received.
He has been reading Marco Polo, and Japan, or Cipango, is very much on his mind. Perhaps on Christopher's, also, but he is content to stick to his "western lands."
Of Cipango he wrote, "This island contains such an abundance of precious stones and metals that the temples and royal palaces are covered with plates of gold!" The Toscanelli letter is dated 1474, and begins: "To Christopher Columbus, Paul the Physician, health: I see thy noble and great desire to go there where grow the spices."
So Columbus wrote, and Toscanelli, the wise scientist, answered that the idea of sailing west was good and feasible; and with the letter came a map, on which Asia and the great island Cipango were laid down opposite Europe, with the Atlantic between, exactly as Columbus imagined it.
The calm voice, low and evenly toned, to which he had been listening, had not prepared him for the livid pursing he saw under the eyes, and the pupils lurid and unnaturally dilated effects we know, good reader, of the meat of the poppies assisted by the friendly Cipango leaves. Yet the merchant replied, strong in the other's strength: "Am not I, too, an Israelite? Only do not take her from me."
He knew that the earth was round, and he inferred from the plants and carved wood and even human bodies that had occasionally floated from the West, that there must be unknown islands on the western coasts of the Atlantic, and that this ocean, never yet crossed, was the common boundary of both Europe and Asia; in short, that the Cipango could be reached by sailing west.
It may be that less than two months' sailing, calm and wind, would bring us to Cipango. Give me the ships and I will do it!" "You might have had them yesterday." To a marked extent he could bring out and make visible his inner exaltation. Now, tall, strong, white-haired, he looked a figure of an older world. "The spheres and all are set to harmony!" he said. "I would have fitness.
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