A World of Surprises!

Columbus's New Discoveries for Europe

presented by Russell D.

Yellow Group

1991

A World of Surprises

Columbus' impressions of the Caribbean's natural beauty * New discoveries: corn, tobacco and hammocks

Author: Lorenzo Camusso

The Voyages of Columbus

This "map" shows how Columbus went from island to island in the Caribbean.

Vocabulary

Botanical - Relating to plants

Maize - Another word for corn

Madrepores - Special invertebrates that take calcium chloride and deposit it into a coral from

When Columbus came to the New World that he thought was Asia on December 5th, he made haste in claiming the land for the King and Queen of Spain. In fact, he even named the southern tip of Cuba "Juana" in honor of their daughter. Even though he was in Cuba, he thought he was near China , in India (he called the natives Indians), and he hoped to return to Europe with rare items. Frankly, he wanted to be a champion of European exploration by bringing back these things. And what he saw was indeed promising. Columbus and his crew admired the beauty of the land with much glee, and they did find new things. Royal Palms were by far unlike anything in Europe. And while he didn't find much of the gold or spice he had been seeking, he also discovered maize, sweet potato, yuca, tobacco, ground red chili peppers (like the seasoning pepper we have today), and hammocks (one of the greatest discoveries of sailing history).

List Of Things Discovered

Royal Palm Trees were undoubtedly unlike any other tree from Europe. Columbus admired the beauty of the Caribbean islands, in part because of these wonderful trees.

Tobacco was another plant discovered. People did not admire this plant though, they instead smoked cigarettes rolled from it's leaves. It was seen as very valuable among natives, and they used it as a trade offering.

Corn was an amazing discovery, as it became and still is a very popular food. It is also known as maize.

Sweet Potato was the same instance as corn, where a new and interesting food was brought back, and became widely popular.

Hammocks were a discovery that helped people out quite a bit, or at least Oviedo thought so. He remarked that less soldiers would die from sleeping on the ground, if only hammocks were used.

A kind of pepper was also found. By "kind" I don't mean anything classification-wise, I mean a variation from the well known seasoning named "pepper." It was made from ground up red chili peppers. Columbus called this spice axi, but Oviedo referred to is as asci.

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