h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Okay, here's the more substantive part (at least, I find it substantive) that you've left out of his third voyage:

In a report to the king and queen, Columbus wrote:

"I am completely pursueded in my own mind that the Terrestrial Paradise is in the place I have said." He described the people of Paria as "whiter than any others I have seen in the Indies" and that they were "more intelligent and have more ability and they are not cowards." He also informed the soveriegns that the earth "has the shape of a pear, which is all very roung, except at the stem, where it is very prominent, or that it is as if one had a very round ball, and on one part of it was placed something like a woman's nipple, and that this part with the stem is the highest and nearest to the sky, and is beneath the equinoctial line and in this Ocean Sea at the end of the East (which is what I call the place where all the land and islands end.)" From Columbus's letter to the Soveriegns dated October 1498, printed in The Four Voyages of Columbus, Vol. II ed. by Cecil Jane, Hakluyt Society (London), series II. Kirkpatrick Sale summarizes much of this stuff in The Conquest of Paradise (have you read it yet, Jodan?) Sale remarks: "It is astonishing to imagine Admiral Colon sitting in his governor's chmbers on Espanola, the chaos and sadness of the island all about him, and solemnly dipping pen into inkwell hour after hour to render thisvision of a hemisphere rising in the shape of a woman's breast until it culminates in Paradise -- and actually planning how Spain will go about the job of colonizing it. It staggers the mind, and sorrows the heart." p. 176.

Okay. I thought it threw an interesting light on Columbus' thinking.

in my preceding post, where ever I have mistakenly typed "roung" please read "round".

I had heard that about the pear-shaped-ness

Were you paraphrasing or can I quote that?

I'm paraphrasing Kirkpatrick Sale. The stuff in quotation marks that Columbus wrote is, from what I can tell, Sale's translation of what appears in the book edited by Cecil Jane. If you quote the quotes you should probably give some attribution. Or, just paraphrase.