It would be some satisfaction
to learn that Ovando was rebuked for his cruelty and stupidity; but
there is no record of such a reprimand. Perhaps no one even knew that
Ovando had been warned. As for the wholesale shipwreck, people merely
looked at such things piously in those days, and said, "It is the will
of Heaven!"
When the first lull came in that devastating storm, Columbus found
himself south of Cuba among the little "Garden" group. It was the third
time he had had a chance to sail along the Cuban coast and discover
whether it really was an island, as the natives said, or whether it was
the mainland, as he had forced his sailors to swear while on the Cuban
voyage when his brain was full of fever. Again he let the problem go
unsolved; the object of this fourth voyage was to find the straits
leading into the Indian Ocean. Having failed to begin his search from
Trinidad by following South America westward, as originally planned, he
expected he would come to the straits by following Cuba's southern shore
in the same direction, if Cuba, as he hoped, was a great strip of land
projecting eastward from the continent. And yet, instead of sailing
along Cuba, or returning to the Gulf of Paria and hugging the land
westward, he suddenly decided to put out southwest into the open sea.
Pages:
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186