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1492-12-06

Columbus sees a great opening in the coast like a river

Haitian

… Another land appeared to him like a not large island to the east, and he would be 40 miles from it. There remained to him another very beautiful and well formed cape, which he named Cabo del Elefante, to the east by southeast, and it was now 54 miles from him. There remained to him another cape to the east-southeast, which he named the Cabo de Cinquin; he would be 28 miles from it. There remained to him a great cleft or opening or inlet to the sea, which seemed to him to be a river, to the southeast, taking in the quarter toward the east; it would be 20 miles from him to the inlet. It seemed to him that between the Cabo del Elefante and that of Cinquin there was a very great entrance, and some of the sailors said it was a separate island; that one he named la Isla de la Tortuga. That large island seemed very high land, unenclosed by mountains, level like beautiful plains, and it seems all tilled or a great part of it, and the sown fields looked like wheat in the month of May in the countryside of Córdoba. …

Source  ·  p. p. 229 Bartolomé de Las Casas, Diario del primer viaje (Las Casas’s abstract of Columbus’s log), in Navarrete, Colección de los viages y descubrimientos, t. I (1825), p. p. 229