They treated their elders with respect, and their wives with affection; and they were untainted with cannibalism and other objectionable savage practices. The discovery of fragments of ancient pottery, by no means inartistically designed, and other objects indicating a higher civilization than that for which Columbus gave them credit, would lead one to believe that the natives were not devoid of a certain degree of culture. Contemporary testimony is almost universally in favour of their firm belief in the existence of a personal Deity, who had power to reward merit and punish vice, a heaven and a hell. Columbus, according to his own account, seems, between the years 1492-4, to have acquired sufficient knowledge of the Indian language to understand a good deal of what was said to him. He had taken two Indians back with him to Spain, and had studied assiduously with them. However that may be, he declares that on one occasion, in July 1494, during his second visit, an aged Cuban made him the following speech as he presented him with a basket of fruit and flowers: "Whether you are a divinity," said he, "or a mortal man, we know not. You come into these countries with a force which we should be mad to resist, even if we were so inclined. We are all, therefore, at your mercy; but if you and your followers are men like ourselves, subject to mortality, you cannot be unapprised that after this life there is another, wherein a very different portion is allotted to good and bad men. And if you believe you will be rewarded in a future state, you will do us no harm, for we intend none to you."