Four hours after the light was seen, at two o'clock in the morning, when the moon, near its third quarter, was in the east, the _Pinta_, keeping ahead, one of her sailors, Rodrigo de Triane descried the land two leagues away, and a gun communicated the joyful intelligence to the other ships. The fleet took in sail, and each vessel, under backed canvas, was pointed to the wind. Thus they waited for daybreak. It was a proud moment of painful suspense for Columbus; and brimming hopes, perhaps fears of disappointment, must have accompanied that hour of wavering enchantment. It was Friday, October 12, of the old chronology, and the little fleet had been thirty-three days on its way from the Canaries, and we must add ten days more to complete the period since they left Palos. The land before them was seen, as the day dawned, to be a small island, "called in the Indian tongue" Guanahani. 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.