Note 305 — Chapter VII · 1497-1521.

“On Sunday, the eighth of May, they doubled the Cape of Florida, giving it the name of the Cape of the Currents (Cabo de Corrientes), because they are stronger there than the wind, and came to an anchorage near a town called Abaiòa. All this coast, from the Point of Reefs (Punta de Arracifes) to the Cape of the Currents, trending north and south one point to the eastward, is clean, and has six fathoms water, the cape lying in twenty-eight degrees fifteen minutes. They sailed on till they met with two islands to the southward, in twenty-seven degrees, one of which, being a league in compass, they named Santa Marta, and took in water there.

“On Friday, the thirteenth of May, they sailed along a shoal and a row of islands as far as the island which they called Pola, lying in twenty-six degrees and a half. Between the shoal and the row of islands and the continent is a spacious sea, like a bay.

“On Sunday, the day of the Feast of the Holy Spirit, the fifteenth of May, they coasted ten leagues along a row of small islands as far as two white ones, and they called them all the Martyrs, (las Martires), because the high rocks, at a distance, look like men suffering, and the name has suited them well on account of the large number of persons who have since been lost there. The rocks lie in twenty-six degrees fifteen minutes. The ships held on, sometimes north and sometimes northeast, until the twenty-third of May; and on the twenty-fourth they ran along the coast to the southward as far as some small islands which lay out at sea, and still they did not perceive that it was the main-land.”