Navarrete, _Biblioteca maritima_, tom. ii. pp.
208, 209.]

[Footnote 512: The accounts of the armament are well summed up
and discussed in Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 405-408. Eighty-seven
names, out of the ninety, have been recovered, and the list is
given below, Appendix C.]

[Sidenote: They go to the Canaries and are delayed there.]

No thought of Vinland is betrayed in these proceedings. Columbus was
aiming at the northern end of Cipango (Japan). Upon Toscanelli's map,
which he carried with him, the great island of Cipango extends from 5 deg.
to about 28 deg. north latitude. He evidently aimed at the northern end of
Cipango as being directly on the route to Zaiton (Chang-chow) and other
Chinese cities mentioned by Marco Polo. Accordingly he began by running
down to the Canaries, in order that he might sail thence due west on the
28th parallel without shifting his course by a single point until he
should see the coast of Japan looming up before him.[513] On this
preliminary run signs of mischief began already to show themselves. The
Pinta's rudder was broken and unshipped, and Columbus suspected her two
angry and chafing owners of having done it on purpose, in order that
they and their vessel might be left behind. The Canaries at this
juncture merited the name of Fortunate Islands; fortunately they, alone
among African islands, were Spanish, so that Columbus could stop there
and make repairs. While this was going on the sailors were scared out
of their wits by an eruption of Teneriffe, which they deemed an omen of
evil, and it was also reported that some Portuguese caravels were
hovering in those waters, with intent to capture Columbus and carry him
off to Lisbon.

[Footnote 513: "Para de alli tomar mi derrota, y navegar tanto
que yo llegase a las Indias," he says in his journal,
Navarrete, _Coleccion de viages_, tom. i.p. 3.]

[Illustration: Martin Behaim's Globe, 1492,]

[Illustration: reduced to Mercator's projection.][514]

[Footnote 514: Martin Behaim was born at Nuremberg in 1436, and
is said to have been a pupil of the celebrated astronomer,
Regiomontanus, author of the first almanac published in Europe,
and of Ephemerides, of priceless value to navigators. He
visited Portugal about 1480, invented a new kind of astrolabe,
and sailed with it in 1484 as cosmographer in Diego Cam's