The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Young Columbus and the Quest for a Universal Library. Edward Wilson-Lee

horn-blowing inhabitants were eventually persuaded to trade for sixteen mirrors weighing in at a total of 150 ducats; and at Cateba they took twenty mirrors for a few hawk’s bells apiece. Also at Cateba they found the first evidence of masonry, in the form of a massive wall made of stone and lime mortar, and further on they encountered the estuary of Veragua, where five villages of the prettiest houses imaginable were surrounded by cultivated fields.

      Then, just when it seemed they must be nearing their Promised Land, the trail went cold. Beyond Veragua the weather turned against them, forcing them eventually to put into a little inlet they named Retrete, where the opening pleasantries with local residents soon turned to hostility. Columbus was able to keep them away from the ships with cannon blasts, bringing to pass the scene foretold in the Book, in which

      the inhabitants of the islands are stupefied before you, and all their kings are shocked by the thunder (Ezekiel 28).

      Despite the natives having an appearance attractive to Hernando, the shore was littered with giant lizard-like crocodiles that smelled ‘as though all the musk in the world had been gathered’ and which would eat any man they found sleeping. With the signs clearly becoming less favourable Columbus reluctantly decided they should return to the region of Veragua where the trail was last warm, but this volte-face came too late. The climate had turned against them and they were stranded aboard their ships amid thunder and lightning so intense the sailors closed their eyes, feeling the ships sinking beneath them and the sky collapsing upon them. In the sleeplessness caused by constant rain, Hernando noted they began to hear phantom distress signals from the other ships, and the endless parade of fears rose once again into their minds: fire from the lightning, wind and waves that might capsize the ship, reefs and rocks along unfamiliar coastline. On 13 December the horror increased when a waterspout arose and passed between two of the ships, in a column as thick as a drum and churning like a whirlwind. During the storm they were separated from the Vizcaína, and though they managed to find her a few days later, they had in the meantime been surrounded by sharks, an encounter that allowed Hernando to describe the sight of a bite from one of these creatures and to record they found, in the sharks’ bellies, a whole turtle and the head of another shark. This might seem impossible, Hernando observed, were it not for the fact that the shark’s mouth reaches from the tip of its olive-shaped head almost down to its stomach. They caught and ate a number of the sharks, which provided a welcome relief from the worm-riddled porridge made of ship’s biscuit. The humidity had made it so thick with insects, Hernando writes, that he saw many of the crew wait until after nightfall to eat so they didn’t have to face the sight of their food; they had long since given up trying to pick the worms out, as this simply meant throwing away one’s dinner.17

      On the Feast of the Epiphany, 6 January, the fleet finally regained the position they had held two months earlier, among the estuary mouths in Veragua. The name of Belén (Bethlehem) was chosen for the river called Yebra in the local tongue, in honour of the day on which the Magi found Jesus. While the river mouth provided some protection from the storms that continued to trouble the open ocean, it was not without its own dangers. The ships were barely able to enter the shallow inlet, which was no more than four fathoms deep, and although safe from the waves once inside they soon realised they faced a threat from another direction. Shortly after they arrived in Belén a flash flood swept down from the mountains a little way inland, snapped loose one of the Capitana