The Indian Ocean which the
Portuguese had crossed must be the southern part of the Atlantic, where
it curved around Asia's southern shores. Ah, if only he could reach it!
If only he had sailed straight for the rich mainland, instead of wasting
his time on those pretty islands, inhabited only by a "poor people"!
He began to recall how the land north of the Gulf of Paria stretched far
west; how the southern shore of Cuba stretched far west; how the
currents of the Caribbean Sea indicated, by the fact that they had
washed Cuba, Haiti, and Porto Rico into their long narrow east-and-west
shape that somewhere in the west they passed through a strait which
separated some large island from southeastern Asia; and that strait must
lead into the Indian Ocean--the very ocean the Portuguese were now
sailing so profitably! He wisely resolved to linger no longer in Spain,
importuning for his lost governorship, but to undertake a fourth voyage
and find this passage.
Good reasoning, all this about "the strait," if only facts had been
geographically correct; and a brave determination, too, for an old man
afflicted with rheumatism and fever and bad sight to resolve to put out
once more on that boisterous ocean. We salute you, Don Cristobal! You
are a true navigator, never afraid of hardships and labor and perplexing
problems.
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