On his second voyage, Christopher Columbus was planning to engage in some colonization practices on the island that is today known as Haiti before heading off to visit Cuba. At the time, Columbus was nearly as ignorant of the layout of the Caribbean as he was of where the New World was located in relation to his original destination. Columbus believed that, by sailing down the coast of Cuba, he would eventually reach some of those Oriental countries described by Marco Polo.
It was while searching for those elusive Oriental nations that were actually on the other side of the world that Columbus and crew began to hear of massive amounts of gold on an island to the south. These stories of gold were delivered to Columbus by natives he had met and developed diplomatic relations with on his first voyage. It was on May 3, 1494 that he made his fateful decision to turn course toward this island of gold.
Once Columbus had changed course, it only took hours for the high bluish hues of the Jamaican mountain summits to be spotted. A native fisherman informed Columbus that his "discovery" was known to the locals as Xaymaca, which roughly translates into "land of many springs." The modern name "Jamaica" doesn't sound too far removed from the name that had been applied to the island long before Columbus convinced Ferdinand and Isabella to finance his misguided voyages.
Despite the fact that Columbus and crew had arrived off the coast of Jamaica within hours of setting sail, white feet would not actually touch the sand that populates the beaches around the island until 2 days later. Columbus landed at what is now Santa Gloria bay on May 5, 1494, and was instantly greeted with hostility by the Taino natives. Shots into the air from the conquistadors' rifles drove them away, so the date stands as the official date marking the discovery of Jamaica.
Columbus considered Jamaica to be the single most beautiful place he'd yet seen in his adventures in the New World. The mountains, beaches and jungles were a delight to his eye, just as they are today to thousands of tourists. And just as those tourists are today greeted by locals with a welcoming grace, 2 days after establishing a camp, Columbus was met by messengers of peace from the very same Taino tribes that had originally met him with spears. This time, the natives met him with local fruits and fish, and in fact continued supplying Columbus and his crew throughout their stay.
Although Christopher Columbus' discovery of Jamaica eventually transformed it into a major economic player in the New World on the basis of its abundant sugar crops, Columbus himself was dismayed and disappointed to discover that the grand stories of majestic repositories of gold on the island were not exactly true, although Jamaica Gold Rum is certainly considered a treasure by many people today.
