All this is false. He says that he does not describe the troubles they suffered, to avoid prolixity, giving to understand that they suffered unjustly; and he does not tell the cause, or what were the outrages that they committed. Moreover, to place these scandals in the secondvoyage is also false, as has already been sufficiently shown. To state that the date of departure was the 22nd of July is still more false. For that date was almost at the end of February in the year 1500, and I even believe in March, as appears from the letters which I saw and had in my possession. I know the handwriting of Francisco Roldan, who wrote every eight or fifteen days to the Admiral, when he went to watch Hojeda. The fact is that the date which should belong to the second he put in the first voyage; and the outrages and harm those who were with him did in the first, he referred to as injuries done to them, without provocation, in the second voyage.
Antonio Garcia, a pilot, saw the drawing of what had been discovered by Juan Diaz, and it is all one coast.155
Vicente Yañez Pinsondeposed that this witness and Juan de Solis went by order of their Highnesses, and discovered all the land that up to this time has been discovered from the island of Guanaja to the province of Camarona, following the coasttowards the eastas far as the provinces of Chabaca and Pintigron, which were discovered by this witness and Juan de Solis, who likewise discovered, in following along the coast, a great bay to which they gave the name of the Bay of the Nativity. Thence this witness discovered the mountains ofCaria,156and other land further on.157
Rodrigo de Bastidassaid that Yañez and Juan Diaz de Solis went to discover below Veragua. He did not know how much they discovered, but it is all one coast with that which was first discovered by the Admiral.
Nicolas Perezsaid that the Admiral, in that voyage when he went to Veragua, discovered Cape Gracias a Dios, and that all beyond that is discovered, was discovered by Yañez and Juan Diaz de Solis; that this appears by the sea-chart drawn by them, and that by it all who go to those parts are guided.
Pedro de Ledesma,158pilot, said that he went in company of Vicente Yañez and Juan Solis by order of their Highnesses, and saw what Vicente Yañez and Juan de Solis discovered beyond the land of Veragua, in a part towards the north,159all that which has been made known up to the present time, from the island of Guanaja towards the north; and that these lands are called Chabaca and Pintigron, and that they reached in a northerly direction as far as 23½ degrees, and that in this part the said Don Cristobal Colon neither went, nor discovered, nor saw.
After the Admiral left the solitude and the hardships he suffered in Jamaica and came to Castille, it being known what he had discovered, there presently agreed together one Juan Diaz de Solis and Vicente Yañez Pinzon (brother of Martin A. Pinzon, of whom we said that he helped the Admiral to fit out in the town of Palos, and went with him, taking Vicente Yañez and another brother, when he sailed on the first voyage to discover these Indies, as has been explained in the first book) to set out and discover, and to continue the route which the Admiral had left on his fourth and last voyage of discovery. These went to take up the thread from the island or islands of Guanajes, which we said that the Admiral had discovered in his last voyage, and they turned to the east.161
These two discoverers sailed162(as may be gathered from the statement of witnesses called by the Fiscal in the lawsuit with the second Admiral) towards the west from the Guanajes, and must have arrived near the Golfo Dolce, although they did not see it because it is concealed, but they saw the openings made by the sea into the land, which contains the Golfo Dolce and that of Yucatan, and it is like a great gulf or bay. (The mariners give the name of bay to the sea that is between two lands in the form ofan open port, which would be a port if it was not that it is very large, but being very capacious and not closed, they call it a bay, theiandainbahiabeing pronounced separately.) Thus, as they saw that great angle made by the sea between the two lands, the one which is on the left hand having its back to the east, and this is the coast which contains the port of Caballos and in front of it the Golfo Dolce, and the other on the right hand, which is the coast of the province of Yucatan. It appeared to them to be a great bay, and Vicente Yañez, therefore (in the sworn deposition he made in the said lawsuit, when he was called a witness by the Fiscal), said that, sailing from the island of Guanajes, the coast stretching along, they discovered a great bay to which they gave the name of the "Great Bay of the Nativity", and thence they discovered the hills of Caria,163and other lands further on. According to the other witnesses, they then turned north.164From all this it appears certain that they then discovered a great part of the kingdom of Yucatan, but as afterwards there was no one who would continue that discovery, nothing more was known of the edifices of that kingdom, whence the territory and grandeur of the kingdoms of New Spain might easily have been discovered. But they were found by chance from the island of Cuba, as, please God, will be set forth in Book III of this history.
And it must here be remarked that these discoverers were chiefly actuated in their enterprize by emulation of the Admiral, and of what he had discovered before, in the service of the Sovereigns. As if the Admiral had not been the first to open the gates of the ocean which had been closed for so many thousands of ages before, and had not shown the light by which all might see how to discover. The Royal Fiscal devoted all his studies to provethat the parts of the mainland discovered by the other explorers were distinct from those which the Admiral had discovered, and he would make a point that the mainland was not so long; his object being to diminish the Admiral's credit, and to make out that the Sovereigns were less obliged to recognise the inestimable services he had performed, and to fulfil the promises they had made, and by which they were bound so justly and with such good reason. This was a great injustice.
With reference to this design, the Fiscal put the question whether the witnesses knew that the discoveries made by others were distinct from those made by the Admiral. For the most part he got the answers he wanted from the sailors, who said it was a different land. But they were not asked if it was all one mainland, nor did they deny that. But others, especially two honourable men whom I knew well, the one Rodrigo de Bastidas, of whom we have already treated, the other a pilot named Andres de Morales, understanding the injury that the prosecutor was trying to do the Admiral, deposed many times, on different occasions in the course of the lawsuit, that the lands others had discovered were to the west of those discovered by the Admiral, but that the whole was one continuous land. True that Vicente Yañez and Juan de Solis went to discover beyond Veragua, along that coast, but all the land that they or any others discovered of the region called the main was all one coast, and continuous with what the Admiral discovered first. Others, besides these two, say it is all one coast from Paria, though provinces have different names, and there are also different languages. This was then declared by witnesses who had been there, and knew it well by having used their own eyes, and now it would be needless to seek further for witnesses than in the grocers' shops in Seville. Thus it cannot be denied to the Admiral, except with great injustice, that as he wasthe first discoverer of those Indies, so he was also of the whole of our mainland, and to him is due the credit, by discovering the province of Paria, which is a part of all that land. For it was he that put the thread into the hands of the rest, by which they found the clew to more distant parts. Consequently, his rights ought most justly to be complied with and respected throughout all that land, even if the region was still more extensive, just as they should be respected in Española and the other islands. For it was not necessary for him to go to every part, any more than it is necessary in taking possession of an estate, as the jurists hold.
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