Columbus leaves Cuba, long believed mainland, and steers southeast toward new land

… The said Indians told him other very marvelous things by signs: but the Admiral, so he says, did not believe them, only that the people of that island Bohío must have more cunning and better wit than they to capture them, because they were very faint of heart. So, because the weather was northeast and took in some of the north, he determined to leave Cuba or Juana, which until then he had held to be mainland for its size, since he must well have gone a hundred and twenty leagues along one stretch of it; and he set out to the southeast by east, although the land he had seen lay to the southeast; he allowed this margin because the wind always veers from the north toward the northeast, and from there to the east and southeast. The wind freshened greatly and he carried all his sails, the sea smooth and the current helping him, so that from morning until one in the afternoon he made 8 miles an hour, and that was not yet a full six hours, because they say the nights there were close to fifteen hours: …