n he reached the
Bahamas he confidently assumed them to be the group of islands which
Toscanelli had indicated as lying off the coast of Cathay; and when he
learned from the natives of a much larger island lying to the south,
which they called Colba, Cuba, or Cubanacan, he believed it to be none
other than Cipango, or Zipangu, which Toscanelli had shown as by far the
largest of the East Indian islands. It has been commonly assumed,
apparently with little dispute or attempt at investigation, that Cipango
was Japan. But the distance--1,500 miles--at which it was said to lie
from the coast of China, the southerly latitude assigned to it, and the
multitude of small islands which were clustered about and near it, are
circumstances which suggest that instead of Japan the island meant may
have been Luzon, the northernmost and largest of the Philippines.
However that may be, Columbus promptly decided to steer straight for
Cipango, with the result that he reached the northern shore of the
eastern part of Cuba.

The third circumstance which I have mentioned was then developed. It was
a great triumph, and a vindication of his enterprise, that he had
reached Cipango. But even that was not enough. He was in quest of the
mainland of Mangi or Cathay, the land of the Great Khan. He found in
Cuba no traces of the opulence and splendor of which Marco Polo had
written. Yet the natives frequently referred to "Cuba-nacan" as a great
place somewhere in the interior. The phrase merely meant the central
part of the island, but the final syllable was identified by Columbus
with "Khan," and, with the wish as father of the thought, he presently
conceived the notion that it was not the island of Cipango upon which he
had landed, but the shore of Cathay itself. Further explorations,
including coasting along the northern shore to within a few miles of the
western extremity, confirmed him in this belief, which became absolute
conviction. To the end of his life, therefore, he believed that Cuba was
the eastern extremity of the Asian continent, which indeed Toscanelli
had delineated upon his map as terminating in a long, narrow cape; and
it was upon the strength of this belief and report of Columbus that
Schoener in 1520 and Muenster in 1532 identified Cuba with the whole
North American continent, while various other cartographers of that time
made it integral with Cathay itself. The maps of La Cosa and Ruysch, in
1508, hinted at this. The Nancy Globe,