An Attempt to Solve the Problem of the Landing Place of Columbus in the New World. Hon. G. V. Fox. Appendix No. 18, U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey Report, 1880.
The question, what is the island. that Columbus named San Salvador, has long been unsettled, and Capt. Fox has contributed another to the numerous answers already given. His choice of Samana, or Atwood Cay, is new and is most ably supported, but although his solution answers many of the necessities of the problem, more so perhaps than any yet proposed, it is open to very strong objections. To assist in a solution the principal authority is the log of Columbus himself, as copied by Las Casas, and this would be all-sufficient, did it not unfortunately contain a few statements which cannot be reconciled with the existing topography of the Bahamas. This difficulty has been recognized by every investigator, and has led to a free interpretation of his statements in advocacy of any solution desired. Capt. Fox has shown praiseworthy industry in his examination of the log, and a conscientious desire to interpret it aright, but is thus led into statements that probably will not be accepted. His thoroughness is shown by the number of authorities, and especially the number of atlases, referred to as throwing light upon the question, but the latter unfortunately differ so much among themselves that almost any view adopted could be supported by some of them. A most valuable feature of the memoir is the verbatim translation of Columbus’ log, the credit for which is given to Mr. H. L. Thomas, translator of the State Department.
The keystone of Capt. Fox's solution is the second island Columbus visited. The log describes the trend and length of the shores of this island, and the description agrees very closely with the Crooked Island group, so closely, in fact, as to justify Capt. Fox's statement that “Crooked Island is the only one in the Bahamas that conforms" to it. The acceptance of this, however, for the second island causes great difficulty, as the third island visited lay nine leagues west of the second, and the fourth nine leagues east of the third. If Columbus came back on his own track he would have acknowledged it, but he writes of the fourth island as of something he had not seen, which he was most anxious to reach from the reports of the natives as to the gold found there, and later describes it as the largest and most beautiful he visited. He gives it a new name, moreover, and although it is possible to imagine that he might have sailed past an island already visited without recognizing it, it is difficult to believe that he should have so utterly lost his reckoning as not to have known after sailing nine leagues easterly that he had returned to the same island from which he had only a few days previous sailed nine leagues west. He landed on both the second and fourth islands, and it is impossible to admit that they were either one and the same, or that they were separated from each other by a mere creek, as are the second and fourth islands chosen by Capt. Fox. The choice of Crooked Island for the second of Columbus necessitates that of Fortune for the fourth, and if the former agrees very closely with the description given, the latter departs as widely from that given of the island of Isabella.
By comparing the preceding solutions of the problem with Columbus’ own account of his cruise among the Bahamas, Capt. Fox has convincingly shown their defects, and in basing his own solution on the log of Columbus he has adopted the only method that can be accepted; but the log evidently contains discrepancies that cannot be reconciled, and in adopting one point, in which the topography apparently agrees exactly with the journal, he sacrifices others no less important. His criticism of Capt. Becher and of Washington Irving is, perhaps, more convincing than is his attempt to lay down a track which shall supplant those proposed by them.