QUOTE : The literate and illiterate soldiers who sailed for the New World carried with them not only their mythologies and faith—mermaids and Amazons, giants and unicorns, the redeeming god who is nailed to a cross and the tale of the Virgin Mother—but also the printed books in which these stories were recorded or retold. It is moving to discover that in Christopher Columbus’s account of his f irst voyage across the Atlantic, upon reaching the coast of Guinea, the admiral saw three manatees swimming close to his ship and wrote that he saw “three mermaids emerge quite visibly from the sea, but,” he added with commendable honesty, “they are not as beautiful as they are made out to be.