Jardines de la Reina

The Jardines de la Reina formed a chain of small islands and shallow passages off Cuba's southern coast. During his second American voyage in 1494, Christopher Columbus approached from Jamaica and Cape Cruz, then tried to follow the coast westward through these waters. Narrow channels and numerous keys made navigation difficult. He gave the island group the name Garden of the Queen, commemorating the Spanish monarchy within the geography recorded by the expedition. The episode illustrates a practical constraint that a map of the open Caribbean can obscure: vessels nearing Cuba's southern shore had to negotiate a maze of shoals and island passages. The group belonged to an inhabited Caribbean world before this European naming, but the voyage account alone does not establish the locations or histories of individual Indigenous settlements among its keys.