Columbus judges the Indies lie under 400 leagues from the Canaries

… and they do not shoot as in other parts, except in a certain manner by which they cannot do much harm. There was very much cotton there, and very fine and long, and there are many mastic trees, and it seemed to him that the bows were of yew, and that there is gold and copper: there is also much ají, which is their pepper, a kind worth more than pepper, and none of the people eat without it, for they find it very wholesome: 50 caravels could be loaded every year in that Española. He says that he found much weed in that bay, of the kind they found in the gulf when he was coming on the discovery, for which reason he believed there were islands to the east, as far as straight across from where he began to find it, because he holds it certain that that weed grows in shallow water near land; and he says that if this is so, these Indies were very near the Canary Islands, and for this reason he believed they lay less than 400 leagues apart.