Note 118 — Chapter XX · Conjectures respecting the descendants of the tribes who built the Temples.—Knowledge and education of the Caciques and Priests.—Traditions of the arrival of white strangers from the East.—Las Casas.—Quetzal-Coatl.—Crosses found in Yucatan.—Gomara.—Legend of the flight of Spaniards by sea towards the West after the conquest of Spain by the Saracens.—Fabulous island of Antilia.—Columbus on his outward voyage steers for Antilia.—Trade-winds.—Considerations upon the probabilities of vessels being driven across the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans towards America.

In the first voyage of Columbus the vessels left the Canaries on the 6th of September and arrived off Guanahani on the night of the 11th of October, having been thirty days at sea. They had traversed a distance, according to the Admiral’s journal, of 1,092 leagues or 3,276 miles. On the second voyage from the Canaries to Dominica they left on the 3rd of October and arrived on the 3rd of November. Upon the last voyage, Columbus left Ferro (one of the Canary islands) on the 26th of May and reached St. Lucia in the West Indies on the 15th of June. This was a quick passage and only occupied twenty days.

In the Vestal, a sailing frigate of 26 guns, we left the island of Gran Canaria in the year 1852, on the morning of the 27th of September, and passed between Antigua and Guadeloupe at noon on the 16th of October after a voyage of nineteen days, having sailed over a distance of 2,800 miles. During the whole of this time we were running before the wind with our studding sails set, steering West. A favourable N.E. wind prevails from Florida to Yucatan and the Mexican coast. With respect to Columbus’s first voyage it should be observed that his landfall at Guanahani was four or five days’ sail further west than the islands of Dominica and St. Lucia.