Note 2 — Chapter II · TRINIDAD AND THE ORINOCO

Trinidad, as the reader will recollect, was discovered by Columbus during his third voyage, and given the name it still bears in honor of the Blessed Trinity. In his letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, describing this voyage, he says he started from San Lucar in the name of the most Holy Trinity, and after two months at sea, during a portion of which time all aboard suffered intensely from the heat,2 they saw to the westward three mountain peaks, united at the base, rising up before them. Here, then, was to them the symbol of the Triune God—the Three in One—in whose name all had left their native land, and what more natural than that it should be named Trinidad—the Trinity? “Upon this,” writes the pious admiral, “we repeated the ‘Salve Regina,’ and other prayers, and all of us gave thanks to our Lord.”