"... about eleven leagues beyond the first mountain pass [Los Hidalgos] he had come to. The land is on the whole flat and the general direction of the road is to the south... they followed a track along which the leading horses had difficulty in passing. From this place the Admiral sent some mules back to Isabel to fetch wine and bread, for they were already running short of food and the journey was proving long. Their hardships were increased by the fact that they were not yet accustomed to eating the food of the Indians, as people do now who live and travel in these parts." [p. 162]
They did get used to eating local food, though Hernando Colon, our author here, the son of Columbus, reminds us in the old manuscript of the Life of the Admiral, that the local food wasn't as nutritious as that brought from Spain. It's just these kind of impossible but provincial asides that seem to show the authenticity of this account. Provenance here has been disputed of this text in the past. But JM Cohen in his 1969 intro to this english translation (of a 1947 Spanish text), explains that he's convinced that only the son as author could make such hyperbolic, and sometimes petty claims about a father. Many of the details are also much more full of certain periods than other eyewitness accounts, like de las Casas. Here, our translator tells us that The Life of the Admiral appeared as an Italian published work in 1571, supposedly from a now lost Spanish original. Cohen says:
"Though one nineteenth century scholar actually suggested that it was no more than the compilation of an Italian bookseller, its authenticity is supported, in my opinion, by the son's exaggerated claims for his father's noble descent and scholarly education - in which no objective critic will believe - and, more strongly still, by his frequent quotations of his father's log-book and other writings, which agree with those of Las Casas and with such originals as survive. None of this material would have been available to an Italian hack working for the book trade." [p. 23]None that one might guess, Cohen would find nutritious. But I have no other evidence.
So they sent people back to the fortress at La Isabela. On Sunday 16 March, Colon the son says, the men returned with food and Columbus set off inland again. It was rough going, but after a while they came to a place where they found grains of gold in a mountain stream. Here Columbus said, they would build Santo Tomas in honor of St Thomas, but also refuting those 'doubting Thomases' who said there would be no gold.
"The further they went, the rougher and more mountainous the country became, and in the streams they found grains of gold. For, as the Admiral says, the rain washed it down from the mountain tops in small grains. This province is as large as Portugal and throughout there are many gold-fields and much gold in the rivers. But generally there are few trees, and these are found on the river-banks. The majority of them are pines and palms of various sorts." [pp. 162-63]The critics were mostly right and Columbus, as usual, mostly wrong. But that didn't stop his drive. In a footnote here, Cohen helpfully reminds us, there were no goldfields. The account of Dr Chanca who went along also seems, Cohen says, to have taken this report of rich goldfields 'on trust'. And he tells us that Colon goes along with the exaggerated claims, as well, reporting as though it was Columbus . Cohen explains in a footnote.[p. 163]
"In fact, Hispaniola was rich in nothing but potential slaves and it was on the slave trade that Columbus, espite the disapproval of the Catholic sovereigns, founded his hopes. He had already made a proposal in the letter that he entrusted to Antonio de Torres for the importation of slaves captured in war."The locals came and brought food and grains of gold - since that's what they heard he wanted, says his son - and after 'eighteen leagues', Columbus decided to build another fort, Santo Tomas. There he stationed Pedro Margarit with fifty-six men. There they 'sowed seed' and found stones like eggs, packed in straw and mud and also marble of various colors and pieces of jasper. [pp. 163-64]
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pp 159-61: The Four Voyages, Christopher Columbus, edited, translated and with an introduction by JM Cohen, for The Penguin Group, London, 1969
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