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other things, and that they better know how nor can the Ogygian growths compare with to chaffer for the price thereof."

These races, so foreign to the ideas and beliefs of the time, which admitted of no variation from the biblical account of the Adamitic descent of man, would have still more astonished Columbus had he known in what part of the globe he was, and not supposed that all the scattered ocean-lands he met belonged to Asia. But in Cuba nature diverts his attention from man. The disemboguing of its rivers in the sea; the surface of its streams strewn with the showered petals of the myriad flowers that festoon their banks, and the trees whose interlocked branches gently shadow their current; the palm-trees, unlike those of Guinea or of Spain; the giant leaves thatching the tiny huts, the grass long and rank as in Andalusia's April- or May-time; the strange sorts of wild purslane and amaranth; the beautiful mountain-ranges, whereof none stretch far, but are very high; the swelling rivers to which he gave the names of the "Seas" and the "Moon"; the gay-plumaged birds; the chirp of the crickets as with us in summer; the precipices like the "Lovers' Cliff" in Andalusia, with yet other crags rising above them with such regularity as to appear from a distance like some great Moorish temple; the cool and fragrant groves; the spices and aromatic plants; the farinaceous tubers called iñames,1 that taste like sweet chestnuts; the bright-colored and delicious beans; the abundance of cotton growing wild on the hills, and bearing all the year round, for he saw both blossoms and opening bolls on the same bush; the mastic-gum, far better than that abounding in the Grecian archipelago; the inexhaustible aloes, the tufted grasses, and the tobacco; the trees wounded to extract their resins and gums; all these, appealing to his senses, excited him to an enthusiasm which would assuredly have been deeper could he have foreseen the innumerable benefits to flow to mankind from his discoveries, and the riches far beyond gold which they threw open to the world's trade.

His journal, during the fortnight in which he describes Cuba and its scenes, reads like a poem-and to be convinced of this you have only to set it by the side of similar descriptions found in the greatest of the world's epics. The oldest narrative of this sort is that told by Ulysses to Arethea in her royal palace. Though heightened by the rhythmic flow of the Homeric verse, the "Odyssey" cannot even remotely compare in interest with the tale of Columbus. The magical dwelling of the enchantress Calypso finds no parallel in these Antillean seas, 1 Yams, not sweet potatoes as most writers explain.

-TRANSLATOR.

this harvest of strange products to nourish the human race and increase its powers an hundredfold. Another epic, the immortal story of Æneas, may excel our discoverer's narration in literary merit, but it sinks beneath it in historical and social interest. Although Virgil has therein aimed to mingle the combats of the "Iliad" and the voyage of the "Odyssey," its epic subjects cannot compare with that presented by the coral reefs which at the mighty spell of Columbus arise under the beams of a new sun from the Shadowy Sea, filled with unknown races, and destined not only to enlarge the bounds of earth, but the mind of man as well. The waters plowed by Æneas in that far-off age had already been cloven by many prows, whilst the virgin waters which Columbus sailed, save for a few frail canoes that ventured not out of sight of land, had never felt keel upon their vast and wayless surface, nor borne the navies and the arms of a great and advanced navigation.

No poet of the Old World or the New so gifted as Camoëns to sing the epic of sea discoveries. The motive of his "Lusiad" has much in common with our discoverer's journal. Portugal anticipated and kept pace with us in expanding ocean's bounds and finding vast continents. Whilst Spain was exploring the unknown seas whence the new world of America arose, the explorations of Portugal found their reward in the olden lands of Asia. That teeming era of Lusitania brought forth alike the pilot-discoverers and the poet to sing their deeds. A living poem in sooth was that apparition of the Indies regained for Europe by the sea-Alexanders of the West. Camoëns begins his poem by declaring that the fame of his Vasco shall forever dim Æneas's glory. How marvelous to behold, in the Rome of Leo X., bound in the golden chains of Portugal, the elephants and leopards that in bygone days. had filled the arenas of the Cæsars in token of the subjection of all earth to the Eternal City. Oriental pearls and rubies, Moluccan cloves, Sumatran gold, the cinnamon of Simahala, the camphor of Ormuz, the indigo of Bombay, amazed all Christendom at the same time that the poesy of Portugal grew strangely exalted and exuberant. Camoëns possessed the stature to produce, like a fabled Titan, the cyclopean epic that sang the new birth of the globe, and to be fit compeer of the colossal Vasco da Gama, who, modern though he be, seems like some mythical deity by his marvelous discovery of the East Indies. But the traits of the Renaissance enfeebled Camoëns. A true son of his age, he saw all things through the enduring traditions of the classic Muse. Therefore, Olympus is the supernatural mainspring

of the emotions of Columbus on beholding Cuba.

The only place where I find aught approaching the description of Cuba by Columbus is in the English Roundhead poem of "Paradise Lost." Adam's self-communings in Eden have in them somewhat of our pilot's artless tale of the splendid tropical life of Cuba; but I discern therein a defect which also mars the "Lusiad." As the garden to which Vasco leads Venus is cut and trimmed in the style of Virgil or Theocritus, so the Eden of Milton is like a smug English park of the seventeenth century.

of his poem, and ancient art gives it form. But the spirit of ancient art was dead, and in its stead the Church ruled the human soul, so that a poem in which the Greek gods moved and acted could at best be only archæological and erudite, although it becomes popular and epic when it sings the story of Lusitania in bygone days and in that Renaissance time. More genuinely poetical appear to me the mass celebrated in that Franciscan convent on the high headland of La Rábida; the "Ave Maria" heard along the shores of Guadalquivir and Cadiz on the evening of the day the discoverer sailed from the mouth of the Odiel toward the Shadowy Sea; the hymns to the Virgin on the caravel's deck as the first stars twinkled in the west or the full moon flooded the rippled sea; the echoes of the "Ave maris Stella" blending with the voices of ocean; the "Te Deums" sung on sighting land and on disembarking, and the sublime thanksgiving of Columbus for the happy end of his voyage, than the apparition of Mercury to Vasco to warn him against the perils awaiting him at Mombaza, the fabulous rising of Venus among the isles of India, or the presence of any gods dead for a thousand years to human conscience and powerless to rekindle with poetic fire the cold ashes of worn-out beliefs. On the other hand, Camoëns is epic in the highest degree, worthy of a place beside Homer, often superior to Virgil, more natural than Tasso and Milton, when, as his forerunner Dante had evoked the supernatural world of the middle ages, he evokes the world of nature, new-born in that paschal time of the Renaissance, and offers in lofty strains the story of Lusitania, the description of the races discovered by his fellow-countryman, and, therewithal, the poesy of the sea; now picturing the making ready and the launching forth to face peril and trial, amid the tears of those on shore; now the cleansing of the hulls from weeds and barnacles in the ports; now the waves pallid beneath the lightning glare; now the waterspout whirling madly aloft, and bearing thick floods in its vast bosom. If Camoëns prevails and endures among the epic poets of the Renaissance above the delirious Ariosto, the artificial Tasso, and the satirical Pulci, it is because he sings nature, rejuvenated by the discoveries of Portugal. To what heights might he not have risen, had he not been circumscribed by the narrow patriotism of his Portuguese nature, and had he, inspired aright by the glory of the whole peninsula, given us the incredible discovery of America by the mighty genius of Columbus! Recognizing his merits as I do, I aver that there is not in all his verse, polished and inspired though it be, any utterance of Vasco's so deeply human as the unstudied record

HAVING thus contemplated the feelings begotten in Columbus by the wondrous sum of Cuba's aspects, let us follow him step by step in his explorations. Let us not lose sight of the fact that the discoverer at one and the same time tells of his impressions of the natives, and of the impressions formed by them of their visitors-heaven-sent, as they imagined in their innocence. In this regard the Spaniards did not inspire the native Cubans with such a blind trustfulness as the other islanders had shown. Far from thronging to them in adoration, they fled and hid away, as from evil spirits. Although they possessed canoes of considerable capacity, they concealed them in the cane-brakes. But Columbus, being a born explorer, did not yield to such tokens of fear; rather was he stimulated to seek the cause of this troubled apprehension. He landed on the shores of the bay where his ships lay anchored, and made careful search in every quarter. The first two dwellings he found were deserted by their timid inhabitants, but filled with household articles showing their recent occupancy. Like the huts of the islands previously visited, they were built of plaited palm-fronds in the shape of tents. Fishing-nets, barbed harpoons, worn hooks of bone, all the implements of fishery he saw, led him to suppose himself in a cleanly and tidy fishing settlement, like those of some European shore. Their large size and ample hearths, indicating rudimentary culture, caused him to form optimistic anticipations touching the region where he had landed. Some kind of mystical notation seemed to exist, since to the repeated inquiries of Columbus about the empire of Cathay and the Great Khan, the Indians answered that the land was watered by ten great rivers, and that ten days' sail separated them from the mainland. But, as Padre Las Casas acutely remarks, either Columbus misunderstood these Indians, or they lied to him, for the mainland now called Florida lay less than five days distant. It was, however, impossible to cruise in search of other lands without ascertaining somewhat of their position and

character. Habituated to see human society organized on a monarchical basis, he inquired persistently for the king of that great realm, whom he conjectured to be in constant intercourse with the Khan, himself the ruler of a mercantile empire. He wandered thus until vesper-time, finding several well-built villages, all utterly abandoned, for their inhabitants had fled in terror to the uplands at the sight of the caravels. In these houses the explorers found, besides the customary utensils, long, neatly made settles, fashioned like beds, with somewhat skilfully carved head-pieces. They also found images rudely representing the female form, and some domesticated wild-fowl. Columbus permitted nothing to be disturbed, in order not to arouse resentment or distrust in the minds of the natives. In his habit of comparing all that he beheld in this new world with the things of the old, he supposed he saw the dried heads of cows, but was mistaken, inasmuch as these animals were there unknown; in reality the skulls were those of the manatee, an aquatic mammal, and resembled heifers' heads in size and shape. Their flesh was found to be palatable, in firmness and flavor something like beef. In these excursions Pinzon attempted to glean information from the natives, but so confusedly that he supposed Cuba to be a city when it was the name of the whole island, and to be joined to the mainland instead of being sea-girt; and the word Guanacán to mean the imperial Khan of India, when it merely denoted a neighboring district. The flight of the natives hindered them from obtaining even such slight details as these, and they sent out an Indian whom they had brought with them from the first-found island, charging him to quiet the distrust of the natives and to induce them to trade with the newcomers, who, far from seeking to despoil them of their belongings, offered them marvels from distant celestial regions. The Indian swam ashore, and in a loud voice proclaimed his novel mission, whereupon two natives appeared, embracing him and carrying him to the nearest hut, where his reassuring words, backed by the proofs of good will he brought with him, persuaded many of the islanders to accompany him to the dreaded ships, in great canoes, carrying balls of cotton thread and other articles of barter. Columbus ordered his crew to touch nothing, and confined himself to inquiring for gold. But even in this simple matter a misunderstanding arose, for he supposed the word nucay to mean gold, when the Indians really called it caona. But, call it by what name they would, it was nowhere to be found, being as rare as on the other islands. Gold being the only proof they could give in Castile of the treasures they had found, it was humanly impossible to abandon the search for

the metal; and so they sent fresh envoys inland, to wit: Rodrigo of Jerez, a townsman of Ayamonte, and Luis de Torres, a converted Jew, who had served the Adelantado of Murcia, and who knew many Semitic tongues. By means of these, with two natives who went with them, the explorers felt sure of finding, first the king of the island, and then its gold. These envoys journeyed twelve leagues, and came to a sort of city of about a thousand souls. Greater courtesy than that natural to these people it would be hard to imagine. They lodged their visitors hospitably, and strove to show them attention. Reverently they touched their hands and kissed their feet, believing them heavensent. With unstinted liberality, they offered them such food as they had. They seated them in the places of honor, while they squatted on the ground about them. The women gathered in an outer circle. When they had heard the report of the two Guanahaní Indians touching the Christians, they implored them to dwell among them. They could not make out a word of the languages spoken by Torres; neither could he, however versed in the Oriental tongues, understand anything of their speech. Nothing was wanting save for the Indians to worship the Spaniards. Although the admiral had supplied the envoys with charts and specimens of European minerals and spices to offer to the chief as to a monarch in covenant of friendship and commerce, they accomplished nothing, being at length convinced that they had only an agglomeration of men to deal with, destitute of the elements of social organization that make up true civic societies. So emotional were the natives, prone to admiration bordering on idolatry and ready to yield the strangers a service akin to slavery, that they followed these envoys, whose speech was sealed to them, in the assurance that they would lead them to the heaven whence they had come. They might have taken five hundred of them had they wished, but they contented themselves with covenanting for the company of the chief villager, his son, and one other native. The young chief visited Columbus with great courtesy, looked with indifference upon the gifts they offered him, so unlike anything he had ever known, and quitted him, saying he would return the following morning-but he never came back. Columbus doubtless regretted having allowed him to depart, since he took five Indians of both sexes on board his ship, and even the husband of a captured Indian woman, who came to the caravel and begged to be taken aboard. Here Padre Las Casas, the historian of the expedition, who is universally consulted as an authority, waxes oracular, and, somewhat like the German professors of our day, appeals to international and natural law against

this proceeding, which he harshly censures as an act of conquest; while Columbus, the peaceful conqueror of these tribes, mentions the incident as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and his simple narrative exhibits not the slightest trace of remorse. Among all the historians who wrote soon after the discovery, none so passionately and enthusiastically defends Columbus as Las Casas; but in presence of a fact to him so incredible as the criminal kidnapping of unoffending families, the chronicler indignantly rebels. He admits the good intention of the sublime pilot; but to this violation of natural rights and eternal justice he charges all the afflictions that later overwhelmed Columbus, holding them to have been a terrible and deserved punishment. In his stoical philosophy, heightened by his monastic temperament, he declares that good is only to be wrought through good, and that the desired end, however pure, is never to be attained by wrongful acts; so that to the padre the discovery seems good and the conquest evil, as though the two were not correlative, and as though, in the ill-starred inheritance of our race and through all the sad pages of our history, stained by dark and baleful deeds to which even slavery itself seems merciful, man had not ever ruthlessly exterminated man in the implacable fury of hatred and the horrors of perpetual combat. Columbus, who had come to Cuba filled with the dreams of hope, found not in Cuba the gold he so ardently sought as a tangible evidence of his marvelous achievement. On the alert for any hint given by the natives, he blunderingly believed every conjecture gleaned from their uncomprehended speech, when it seemed to confirm his own imaginings. The Indians said "Babeque," and he fancied he recognized the title they gave to the golden empires figured on the maps of that fantastic age and limned in his own confused cosmology. Passing from one false interpretation to another, at length he came to believe that another shore was near, whose inhabitants were covered with ornaments of massy gold, and yet other lands peopled by a race resembling the Cyclops fabled of old, having but one eye set above a dog's muzzle. He went on, ever in quest of these treasures and marvels. Having met with chilly weather, as might be expected in November and December, he bore eastward and southward. In this voyage everything allured and enchanted him: the serene skies, the celestial water, the graceful headlands, the deep and calm bays, so pellucid and tranquil as to elicit his lively admiration; the island groups, like heavenly constellations-all these our new pilgrim of nature beheld, absorbing their vitality as a sponge absorbs water. Yet the manifold beauties and lovely changeful aspects of the

Cuban landscape only intensified his keen disappointment at finding no gold.

November 19, he sailed in search of the new region toward Puerto Principe, where he erected a cross. He intended to sail along the coast, to gain a better knowledge of the land that lay in sight, while seeking that other realm pictured in fancy; but strong head-winds that baffled and drove him upon dangerous shoals constrained him to stand out to sea. And now befell the greatest misfortune of his voyagethe parting company with his lieutenant, that matchless pilot and unequaled organizer, to whose efforts the successful outfitting of the expedition was mainly due, and whose firmness had overcome all obstacles in its path. The thirst for glory and gain which our race inherits; the inevitable insubordination of those natures who fancy themselves born to command, not to obey; the temptation to forestall Columbus in the quest for the golden shores, and elevate himself by reaping the harvest now that his captain had won the fame of the discovery, led Pinzon to an act whence sprang all his subsequent disasters. The admiral, however, was not disconcerted by this. As often as the wind allowed he stood toward the land, and again made the offing, entranced alike by the magic vistas of shore and sea. Poetical and sensitive by nature, he never tired of gazing upon the waters, to which he gave the name of "Our Lady's Sea," or upon the calm bosom of the limpid rivers, the blossom-laden banks, the rocky cliffs gilded and glittering like illusive hopes, the pine-woods exhaling balm, the amber-like gums, the delectable brooks below contrasting with the peaks far above and bright with evanescent hues, the intermingling of palms and cedars, the countless quiet bays lakelike in beauty and like havens in their repose, the canoes floating by the shores or drawn up on land and concealed by leafage, the unclad Indians indistinguishable save by their varied painting and fanciful head-gear of feathers, the emotions awakened in those savages at the sight of the Spaniards, white and thick-bearded, cased in armor which they imagined to be the natural covering of their bodies, and apparently descended from some higher celestial sphere to mingle with puny mortals on the lowly earth.

At length Columbus reached the most easterly point of Cuba, and there he learned that before him lay another island, called by the natives Haïti-the lofty land. Columbus, who kept on giving new names at will to the islands he found, called Cuba Isla Juana, in memory of the ill-fated prince Don John, later to be cut down in the flower of young manhood when about to unite Spain and Portugal as his parents had united Castile and Aragon. Bef·

he sighted Haïti he cast about for a name to bestow upon it, not rightly apprehending the import of the Indian word. He discovered it December 5, 1492, after sailing eastward sixteen leagues from the extremity of Cuba. He was much struck by its resemblance to Spain. Soles and red mullet were caught in its waters; asphodel and arbutus blossomed on the uplands; on the hillsides stretched dense oak forests, and in their deep intervales lay neat, well-tended gardens, familiar plants of darkgreen foliage festooned the streams; and the cone-filled pine crested the heights, while huts much like our own were seen. These resemblances led Columbus to give it the name of Española (Hispaniola), in harmony with his reawakened memories of the mother-country. The natives appeared to be fairer of skin than those seen before, and higher in culture. They fled, like the rest, but came back at the call of the Spaniards. Two chiefs were soon met with, and the Spaniards learned that they were called caciques throughout the islands. The first and younger of them was timid and shy, but the second confident and accessible to every emotion. They came in procession, carried upon litters, in great pomp and with a numerous following. They went on board without distrust, and with well-bred courtesy took seats at the admiral's table. When offered refreshments, they ceremoniously tasted of the delicacies, and shared them with their attendants, who devoured them greedily. More gold was found in this island than in the others, nose-jewels worn by the women, and even thin plates, but all of small size and infrequent. No wonder that all December was agreeably spent by Columbus between Española and Tortuga, gathering information and naming the country. The first port in which he cast anchor, as fair as any of Cuba, he called San Nicolas, having landed there on that saint's day; the second he called Concepcion, the third St. Thomas. As in all the spots thus far visited, the Indians fled at the coming of the Spaniard. But when the fugitives were called back by their fellow-Indians whom Columbus had brought with him, they returned and began to examine and touch the visitors, although fighting shy of them, timorous of every gesture and frighted at the slightest sign, yet accepting the most trifling gifts with simple confidence, and exhibiting the greatest delight thereat. In Española they found a cacique of more importance than any before met. His name was Guacanagarí. He was distinguished from the rest by his greater interest in the new order of things heralded by his guests, and by his reverential treatment of them, as though strangely forecasting the changes their advent was to bring. There were five other chiefs in the island, and Guacanagarí

ruled over the northern part, where the caravels then were. At the first offers of barter he displayed a wealth and authority above what they had witnessed hitherto. The Indians had been in the habit of offering girdles to their guests in sign of friendship, and Guacanagari gave one of notable magnificence. Composed of three folds of cotton cloth, so thick and closely woven that an arquebus could scarcely have pierced it, it was ornamented with coral, shells, and pearls, and at the side hung a grotesque mask with eyeballs and tongue of pure gold. An embassy from the chief brought this gift, and Columbus spent the whole day endeavoring to interpret the signs made by the envoys in offering him all he might desire. Guacanagari was eager to see more of the Spaniards, and sent numbers of his lighthearted people to welcome them and bring them gifts of every sort. Their enthusiasm was unbounded, their generosity unstinted. The land was gay with festivities, the sea swarmed with canoes. On nearing the caravels, the Indians that crowded them stood up, tendering all kinds of offerings with gestures of devotion, as in idolatrous worship.

Beholding all this enthusiasm, Columbus despatched a formal embassy to Guacanagari, and on hearing their report he determined, despite the prevailing land-breeze, to weigh anchor and sail to the dominions of his friends. which were some five leagues distant. He set out at daybreak on December 24. Little progress was made during all that day. The night came, Christmas Eve, and Columbus determined to celebrate it, as best befitted his own health and the comfort of his own crew, by enjoying a sound sleep. He retired, worn out by three nights of vigil following three days of herculean labor. Sweet must have been his rest! His discovery of that new world whose very existence had been denied, the endless upspringing of Eden-isles, the simple races bound to nature by such mysterious ties and soon to be brought into the fold of civilization and Christianity, must have filled his mind with happy dreams on this the first restful Christmas Eve he had passed in thirty years of titanic contest with all the world, and at times even with his own self. It was midnight, when the echoes of childhood and of times long past fill the slumbering ear. The heavens smiled, and the sea was calm. The sailors slept soundly, sure of their bearings and sea-room because preceded by the little fleet of skiffs and canoes sent by Columbus to the Indian king. A ship's boy held the helm, so assured were they all of the fairness of the weather and the safety of their course-when the flag-ship suddenly struck upon a sunken reef. Čolumbus instantly divined his peril, and hurried on deck. With

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