Near the year 1484, one year more or less, a pilot, native of the town of Huelva, in the county of Niebla, named Alonzo Sanchez de Huelva, had a small ship, with which he traded on the sea, and brought certain merchandise from Spain to the Canaries, where he sold it profitably. And in the Canaries he loaded his ship with the fruits of those islands, and took them to the island of Madeira, and thence he returned to Spain, laden with sugar and conserves. While he was engaged in this triangular voyage, on the passage from the Canaries to Madeira, he encountered so heavy a squall that he was obliged to run before it for twenty-eight or twenty-nine days, during the whole of which time he could not take an altitude, either for his latitude or his course. The crew of the ship suffered the greatest hardships in the storm; for they could neither eat nor sleep. At the end of this long time the wind went down, and they found themselves near an island. It is not known for certain what island it was, though it is supposed to have been the island which is now called St. Domingo. It is very worthy of note that the wind which drove that ship with so much fury and violence could not have been other than the Solano, as the east wind is called; for the island of St. Domingo is to the westward of the Canaries, and the wind in that quarter usually appeases rather than raises a storm.