uanahani. Some naked
natives were descried. The Admiral and the commanders of the other
vessels prepared to land. Columbus took the royal standard and the
others each a banner of the green cross, which bore the initials of the
sovereign with a cross between, a crown surmounting every letter. Thus,
with the emblems of their power, and accompanied by Rodrigo de Escoveda
and Rodrigo Sanchez and some seamen, the boat rowed to the shore. They
immediately took formal possession of the land, and the notary recorded
it.

The words of the prayer usually given as uttered by Columbus on taking
possession of San Salvador, when he named the island, cannot be traced
farther back than a collection of _Tablas Chronologicas_, got together
at Valencia in 1689, by a Jesuit father, Claudio Clemente. Harrisse
finds no authority for the statement of the French canonizers that
Columbus established a form of prayer which was long in vogue, for such
occupations of new lands.

Las Casas, from whom we have the best account of the ceremonies of the
landing, does not mention it; but we find pictured in his pages the
grave impressiveness of the hour; the form of Columbus, with a crimson
robe over his armour, central and grand; and the humbleness of his
followers in their contrition for the hours of their faint-heartedness.

Columbus now enters in his journal his impressions of the island and its
inhabitants. He says of the land that it bore green trees, was watered
by many streams, and produced divers fruits. In another place he speaks
of the island as flat, without lofty eminence, surrounded by reefs, with
a lake in the interior.

The courses and distances of his sailing both before and on leaving the
island, as well as this description, are the best means we have of
identifying the spot of this portentous landfall. The early maps may
help in a subsidiary way, but with little precision.

There is just enough uncertainty and contradiction respecting the data
and arguments applied in the solution of this question, to render it
probable that men will never quite agree which of the Bahamas it was
upon which these startled and exultant Europeans first stepped. Though
Las Casas reports the journal of Columbus unabridged for a period after
the landfall, he unfortunately condenses it for some time previous.
There is apparently no chance of finding geographical conditions that in
every respect will agree with this record of Columbus, and we must
conte