“I think,” Columbus writes, “no one who has seen these parts can say less in their praise than I have said. I repeat that it is a matter of wonder to see the things we have beheld, and the multitudes of people in this island, which I call Española, and the Indians Bohio. The natives are singularly agreeable in their intercourse and conversation with us, and are not like the others, who, when they speak, appear to be uttering menaces. The figures of the men and women are fine, and their color is not black, although they paint themselves. The most of them paint themselves red, others a dark hue, and others different colors, which, I understand, is done to keep the sun from injuring them. The houses and towns are very attractive, and the inhabitants live in each settlement under the rule of a sovereign or judge, to whom they pay implicit obedience. These magistrates are persons of excellent manners and great reserve, and give their orders by a sign with the hand, which is understood by all the people with surprising quickness.” On Monday, the twenty-fourth of December, as Columbus’s ship, the Santa Maria, was running along the north side of Española, off the headland named Punta Santa, “at the end of the first watch, about eleven at night, when the vessel was about a league distant from the point of land, the admiral lay down to sleep, having taken no rest for two days and a night. As the sea was calm, the man at the helm left his post to a boy, and also went off to sleep, contrary to the explicit orders of the admiral, who had throughout the voyage forbidden, in calm or storm, the helm to be intrusted to a boy. The admiral was free from any dread of rocks or shoals, for the Sunday before, when he sent the sailors in boats to the king who had invited him to visit him, they had passed three and a half leagues to the east of Punta Santa, and had surveyed the whole coast for three leagues beyond that point, and ascertained where the vessels might pass, a thing never done before in the whole voyage. But as it pleased our Lord, at midnight there being a dead calm and the sea perfectly motionless, as in a cup, the whole crew, seeing the admiral had retired, went off to sleep, leaving the ship in the care of the boy already mentioned. The current carried her imperceptibly toward the shoals in the neighborhood, upon which she struck with a noise that could have been heard a league off.”