The Historia de las Indias

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You may recall that the transcription of Columbus's log was done by Bartolome de Las Casas. Las Casas was a Spanish monk and historian, who also wrote a massive history of the Spanish conquest of America, the Historia de las Indias (History of the Indies), or Historia for short. This work covers Columbus in detail, but there isn't much there that isn't also in the Diario, so it has been mostly overlooked by landfall historians.

One of the important arguments made against the Samana Cay theory had been that Columbus could not have returned to the vicinity of Island II (as the theory required) without mentioning it in the log. But in 1992, Alejandro Perez noticed a key passage in the Historia. Here is Las Casas describing Columbus's decision to leave Fernandina, Island III, in search of Saometo (emphasis added):

"Because the Indians he had taken in the first island of Guanahani or San Salvador told him and indicated through signs that the island of Saometo, which had been left behind, was larger than Fernandina, and that they should return to it (and they must have done this in order to get closer to their land, from where he had taken them), the Admiral decided to turn around toward the east . . ."

Since the emphasized passages make geographical statements not completely obvious from the Diario, Perez has speculated that Las Casas had Columbus's map in front of him when he wrote this. (We know Columbus made a map of his discoveries on the first voyage, but it has been lost for centuries.) And since there is another place in the Historia where Las Casas explicitly claims to have Columbus's map, Perez's idea makes a lot of sense.

The key information here: 1) That in sailing from Island III (Fernandina) to Island IV (Saometo), Columbus returned in the way from which he had come; and 2) in so doing, he came closer to Island I (Guanahani).

This passage is used as the basis for one of the clues in the scorecard.

Also in the Historia is the intriguing statement that Island I is 15 leagues long. Most now discount this description, but it's in the scorecard, too.

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