at the
former course was pursued, and I have accordingly adopted the theory
that Columbus first landed in Cuba in the region between Nuevitas and
Punta Lucrecia.

The second circumstance which I have mentioned scarcely requires
discussion. The first, second and third voyages of Columbus were
confined to discoveries and explorations of the West India Islands, and
of all of these, even including Hayti and Jamaica, there can be no
question of Cuba's primacy, whether in size, in wealth of resources, in
political and strategical importance, or in historical interest. It was
so recognized by Columbus himself, who indeed in one respect actually
esteemed it more highly than it deserved. For after long and careful
exploration he became convinced that it was not an island, but was the
mainland of the Asian continent--Mangi, or Cathay: that country of the
Great Khan of which Marco Polo had written and which Toscanelli had
indicated upon his map, and the visiting of which was the supreme object
of the Admiral's enterprise.

To understand this aright we must remember that Columbus was not seeking
a new continent. He had no thought that one existed. He held, with
Isidore of Seville, that all the lands of the world were comprehended in
Europe, Africa and Asia, and that there was only one great ocean, the
Atlantic, which stretched unbroken save by islands from the western
shores of Europe and Africa to the eastern coast of Asia and the East
Indies. Moreover, he considerably overestimated the extent of Asia and
underestimated the circumference of the earth. Years later, long after
the circumnavigation of the globe had been effected, Antonio Galvano,
learned historian and geographer though he was, computed the equatorial
circumference of the earth at only 23,500 miles, or about 1,400 miles
too little; while the best maps of the sixteenth century indicated the
Asian continent as extending far into the western hemisphere, and the
Pacific Ocean as a narrow strip not nearly comparable with the Atlantic
in extent. Schoener's globe, of 1520, which is still to be seen at
Nuremberg, represents the "Terra de Cuba" as integral with the whole
North American continent, with its western coast only five degrees of
longitude or 300 miles from the shore of Zipangu or Japan, and only 30
degrees or 1,800 miles from the mainland of Asia.

Columbus therefore expected to find the coast of Asia in about the
longitude in which he actually found America. Whe