MARTIN PINZON did not return to us. That tall, blond sea captain was gone we knew not where. The Santa Maria and the Nina sailed south along the foot of Cuba. But now rose out of ocean on our southeast quarter a great island with fair mountain shapes. We asked our Indians—we had five aboard beside Diego Colon—what it was. "Bohio! Bohio!" But when we came there, its own inhabitants called it Hayti and Quisquaya.
The Admiral paced our deck, small as a turret chamber, his hands behind him, his mind upon some great chart drawn within, not without. At last, having decided, he called Juan de la Cosa. "We will go to Bohio."
So it was done whereby much was done, the Woman with the distaff spinning fast, fast!
As this island lifted out of ocean, we who had said of Cuba, "It is the fairest!" now said, "No, this is the fairest!" It was most beautiful, with mountains and forests and vales and plains and rivers.
The twelfth day of December we came to anchor in a harbor which the Admiral named Concepcion.
On this shore the Indians fled from us. We found a village, but quite deserted. Not a woman, not a man, not a child! Only three or four of those silent dogs, and a great red and green parrot that screamed but said nothing. There was something in this day, I know not what, but it made itself felt. The Admiral, kneeling, kissed the soil, and he named the island Hispaniola, and we planted a cross.
For long we had been beaten about, and all aboard the ships were well willing to leave them for a little. We had a dozen sick and they craved the shore and the fruit trees. Our Indians, too, longed. So we anchored, and mariners and all adventurers rested from the sea. A few at a time, the villagers returned, and fearfully enough at first. But we had harmed nothing, and what greatness and gentleness was in us we showed it here. Presently all thought they were at home with us, and that heaven bred the finest folk!
Our people of Hispaniola, subjects now, since the planting of the flag, were taller, handsomer, we thought, than the Cubans, and more advanced in the arts. Their houses were neat and good, and their gardens weeded and well-stocked. The men wore loin cloths, the women a wide cotton girdle or little skirt. We found three or four copper knives, but again they said that they came from the south. As in Spain "west—west" had been his word, so now the Admiral brooded upon south.
These folk had a very little gold, but they seemed to say that theirs was a simple and poor village, and that we should find more of all things farther on. So we left Concepcion, the cross upon the rock showing a long way through the pure air.
For two days we coasted, and at the end of this time we came to a harbor of great beauty and back from it ran a vale like Paradise, so richly sweet it was! Christopherus Columbus was quick to find beauty and loved it when found. Often and often have I seen his face turn that of a child or a youth, filled with wonder. I have seen him kiss a flower, lay a caress upon stem of tree, yearn toward palm tops against the blue. He was well read in the old poets, and he himself was a poet though he wrote no line of verse.
We entered here and came to anchor and the sails rattled down. "Hispaniola—Hispaniola, and we will call this harbor St. Thomas! He was the Apostle to India. And now we are his younger brothers come after long folding away. Were we more—did we have a fleet—we might set a city here and, it being Christmas, call it La Navidad!" Out came the canoes to us, out the swimmers, dark and graceful figures cleaving the utter blue. Some one passing that way overland, hurrying with news, had told these villages how peaceful, noble, benevolent, beneficent we were.
The canoes were heaped with fruit and cassava bread, and they had cotton, not in balls, but woven in pieces. And these Indians had about neck or in ear some bits of gold. These they changed cheerfully, taking and valuing what trifle was given. "Gold. Where do you get your gold? Do you know of Cipango or Cathay or India? Have ever you heard of Zaiton, or of Quinsai and Cublai Khan?" They gave us answers which we could not fully understand, and gestured inland and a little to the east. "Cibao! Cibao!" They seemed to say that there was all the gold there that a reasonable mortal might desire. "Cibao?—Cipango?" said the Admiral. "They might be the same."
"Like Cuba and Cublai Khan," thought Juan Lepe.
Around a point of shore darted a long canoe with many rowers. Other canoes gave way for it, and the Indians already upon the Santa Maria exclaimed that it was the boat of the cacique, though not the cacique but his brother sat in it. Guacanagari was the cacique. His town was yonder! They pointed to a misty headland beyond St. Thomas's bay.
The Indian from the great canoe came aboard, a handsome fellow, and he brought presents not like any we had seen. There was a width of cotton embroidered thick with bits of gleaming shell and bone, but what was most welcome was a huge wooden mask with eyes and tongue of gold. Fray Ignatio crossed himself. "The devil they worship,—poor lost sheep!" The third gift was a considerable piece of that mixed and imperfect gold which afterwards we called guanin. And would we go to visit the cacique whose town was not so far yonder?
It was Christmas Eve. We sailed with a small, small wind for the cacique's village, out from harbor of St. Thomas, around a headland and along a low, bright green shore. So low and fitful was the wind that we moved like two great snails. Better to have left the ships and gone, so many of us, in our boats with oars, canoes convoying us! The distance was not great, but distance is as the power of going. "I remember," quoth the Admiral, "a calm, going from the Levant to Crete, and our water cask broken and not a mouthful for a soul aboard! That was a long, long two days while the one shore went no further and the other came no nearer. And going once to Porto Santo with my wife she fell ill and moaned for the land, and we were held as by the sea bottom, and I thought she would die who might be saved if she could have the land. And I remember going down the African coast with Santanem—"
Diego de Arana said, "You have had a full life, senor!"
He was cousin, I had been told, to that Dona Beatrix whom the Admiral cherished, mother of his youngest son, Fernando. The Admiral had affection for him, and Diego de Arana lived and died, a good, loyal man. "A full outward life," he went on, "and I dare swear, a full inward one!"
"That is God's truth!" said the Admiral. "You may well say that, senor! Inside I have lived with all who have lived, and discovered with all who have discovered!"
I remember as a dream this last day upon the Santa Maria. Beltran the cook had scalded his arm. I dressed it each day, and dressing it now, half a dozen idling by, watching the operation, I heard again a kind of talk that I had heard before. Partly because I had shipped as Juan Lepe an Andalusian sailor and had had my forecastle days, and partly because men rarely fear to speak to a physician, and partly because in the great whole there existed liking betwe............