| THE REVERSUS, A FISHING TALE OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS |
By Dr. C. R. BASTMAN
AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
TRULY a remarkable fish story that which should require an analysis of the earliest sources of American history in order to attest its credibility. Nevertheless there lies buried among the contemporary narratives that have come down to us of the second voyage of Columbus, in 1494, a tale of fish and fishermen of such interest and novelty, and apparent truthfulness, as will repay attention on the part of present-day students of history and natural science.
The original narrator of the fishing incident about to be described appears to have been Columbus himself. Unfortunately, however, the log or journal kept by the great navigator during his second voyage is no longer extant; but we possess abridgments of it in what passes for the "Life of Columbus," by his son Ferdinand, and also in the "History of the Indies" which we owe to that man of revered memory. Bartolomé de las Casas.
There has also been preserved for us a letter written by a naturalist who accompanied Columbus during his second voyage. Dr. Diego Alvarez Chanca; and much information derived from personal intercourse with the admiral and the men under his command is embodied in the writings of Peter Martyr of Anghera, sometimes styled the "father of American history," and in the chronicles of Andrés Bernaldez, curate of Los Palacios, in Andalusia. It is of record that Columbus placed his journals and other papers in the hands of Bernaldez, whose guest he was in 1496. Thirteen chapters of the curate's book are devoted to an account of Columbus and his discoveries. These, then, are the original sources to be consulted in regard to the happenings which took place during the memorable second voyage to the West Indies.
From the writings that have just been mentioned we learn that the Spaniards came upon a party of native fishermen off the coast of Cuba who were engaged in the capture of marine turtles, the means employed by them for that purpose being wholly unlike anything ever seen or heard of in Europe. In a word, it consisted in the use of a sucking-fish, known to naturalists as the Remora, which, after having been caught and tethered (so to speak) by means of a cord attached to its body, was allowed to fasten itself by its sucking disc to another fish or turtle, whereupon both were drawn in. Historians have frequently repeated the narrative, but only a single naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt,
