San Salvador Island to Cuba

IT seems strange that in spite of the amount of study that has been given to Christopher Columbus in his discovery of the New World the actual points visited by him between his landfall and the Island of Cuba have never yet been positively determined. Most attempts at reconstructing this part of the first voyage have been made at the desk. I hoped to contribute to the solution by studying the problem in the field-by actually following the discoverer's course step by step in a small boat.' With this purpose I sailed early in January, I930, for Watling which is now generally agreed upon as the landfall of Columbus and has in fact been recognized as such under the official designation of Salvador or Watlings Island, by an Act of Parliament (I926). The incidents of the trip before reaching San Salvador have no bearing upon the subject matter of this article other than that in sailing from Eleuthera across to Cat a distance of some thirty odd miles, I had here clearly demonstrated to me the phenomena of horizon limitations which have made some of Columbus' statements

Archaeology · Cruise · Geography · Track (disk drive · Cuban History and Society · Engineering · Geology · History · Oceanography