d Japan, began
with the first sight of land, to be engrossed with the task of
identifying each newly discovered country with some island or district
of the Far East, named on his maps. He was an ignorant man, though he
knew Ptolemy and Marco Polo by heart, credulous, uncritical, not
consciously dishonest, but unready to correct false impressions caused
by his ignorance and gullibility. His notes, as may be seen from a
reproduction of a page of his manuscripts (facing p. 38), were in an
execrable hand. The forger of the _Journal of the First Voyage_ was no
puzzle expert, and made mistakes in deciphering scrawls. Thus, for
example, the note _Giaua min._, _i.e._, Java minor, was read
_Guanahin_, the same destined to masquerade as _Guanahani_, the Indian
name of the first island sighted on October 12, 1492.

Perhaps the best specimen of such ghost-words in the _Journal_ is the
name _Carib_. This is nothing but Marco Polo's _Cambalu_, the capital
of the Grand Khan, successively misread as Canibal, Caniba, Cariba. So
also, "canoe" is a ghost-word, traced to a misreading of _scaphas_ as
_canoas_ in the manuscript, or the Gothic text of the Latin version of
the First Letter. It is interesting to learn that _maize_, in the
forms _masa_, _maza_, ultimately from Portuguese _mararoca_, is the
African name for Guinea corn. The transference of the name from Guinea
corn to Indian corn, "rests on a misunderstanding of a passage in
Peter Martyr's _First Decade_" (p. 123).

The question arises whether or not there had been a colony of
Europeans, with African slaves in America, before the arrival of
Columbus.

Fray Ramon Pane, Oviedo, and Las Casas give _conico_ as the Indian
word for "farm, plantation." This is clearly the Mandingo _kunke_
"farm." The Indian word for "golo," according to the Journal entry for
January 13, 1493, is _caona_. It is found also in the name of _Cacique
Caonabo_, called in the _Journal of the Second Voyage_ "master of
mines,"--the name being explained in the Libretto as "lord of the
house of gold." Now the words for "gold" in the Negro languages are
mostly derived from Arabic _din[=a]r_, which, through Hausa _zinaria_,
and Pul _kanyera_, reaches Vei as _kani_. Evidently _canoa_, written
also _guani_, is nothing but this Vei word. In "Cacique Caonabo," we
have three Mande words in juxtaposition. _Cacique_ is not far removed
from _kuntigi_, Soso _kundzi_, "chief,"--_caona_, that is _kani_, is
"gold," and _boi_