I'm a little annoyed at Columbus right now. He's excited to have found this land, as well he should be, and I realize that I'm reading this with a 21st century mindset. However, when he says "...of them all I have taken possession for their highnesses, by proclamation made and with the royal standard unfurled, and no opposition was offered to me." I could feel my annoyance with him begin to rise. I know that when he was sailing it was commonplace to claim land but in my 21st century mind, I can't fathom just going onto some island, seeing people on it and saying "Hey ... this is mine" throwing a flag into it and nobody saying anything to oppose. Its quite mind-boggling for me. Later, he says that "they all fled immediately" when he comes up on what he thought was China and says that he wants to "have speech" with them. First of all, he's coming from Spain, growing up in Italy, and thinks he's in China. How on earth is he going to speak to them? In what common language will they converse? Though I'm sure some smartypants out there is going to tell me that Columbus studied Chinese. And of course they fled. These people with three huge boats, that look nothing like them came barreling into their harbor. And while he thought it was China, we now know it wasn't, so these people didn't have the slightest clue what was going on. Which makes me wonder about Columbus. He had thought he had found China, which is where he wanted to end up. They obviously weren't sure of the size of the world, but I wonder if he didn't think that China as a whole knew that boats pulled into harbors. He writes about not wanting to go north because of it being winter, and sends three men to the land and they return in three days time without anything too interesting. I'm curious as to how and what he was thinking and feeling at that time. I'm curious if he thought that he would be able to find the same harbor as everyone else who had come before him, and the fact that he hadn't found anything remotely even close to what he had expected was handled. For that matter, how his crew handled this knowledge, knowing that they wanted to turn back during the voyage over. Being on his crew and wanting to turn back, having your captain say that wasn't an option, and then not finding what you had expected to find must have been a lot for them to handle. I wonder if all of them went back to Spain in their right minds, and if they didn't, how they were taken care of by doctors.
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