The Life of Columbus: From His Own Letters and Journals and Other Documents of His TimeHale, Edward Everett
History
The Life of Columbus: From His Own Letters and Journals and Other Documents of His Time
Hale, Edward Everett
Columbus, Christopher, 1451-1506
“All this coast,” says the Admiral, “and the part of the island which I
saw, is all nearly flat, and the island the most beautiful thing I
ever saw, for if the others are very beautiful this one is more so.” He
anchored at a cape which was so beautiful that he named it Cabo Fermoso,
the Beautiful Cape, “so green and so beautiful,” he says, “like all the
other things and lands of these islands, that I do not know where to go
first, nor can I weary my eyes with seeing such beautiful verdure and so
different from ours. And I believe that there are in them many herbs and
many trees, which are of great value in Spain for dyes (or tinctures)
and for medicines of spicery. But I do not know them, which I greatly
regret. And as I came here to this cape there came such a good and sweet
odor of flowers or trees from the land that it was the sweetest thing in
the world.”
He heard that there was a king in the interior who wore clothes and
much gold, and though, as he says, the Indians had so little gold that
whatever small quantity of it the king wore it would appear large to
them, he decided to visit him the next day. He did not do so, however,
as he found the water too shallow in his immediate neighborhood, and
then had not enough wind to go on, except at night.
Sunday morning, October 21, he anchored, apparently more to the west,
and after having dined, landed. He found but one house, from which
the inhabitants were absent; he directed that nothing in it should be
touched. He speaks again of the great beauty of the island, even greater
than that of the others he had seen. “The singing of the birds,” he
says, “seems as if a man would never seek to leave this place, and the
flocks of parrots which darken the sun, and fowls and birds of so many
kinds and so different from ours that it is wonderful. And then there
are trees of a thousand sorts, and all with fruit of their kinds.
And all have such an odor that it is wonderful, so that I am the most
afflicted man in the world not to know them.”
They killed a serpent in one of the lakes upon this island, which Las
Casas says is the Guana, or what we call the Iguana.
In seeking for good water, the Spaniards found a town, from which the
inhabitants were going to fly. But some of them rallied, and one of them
approached the visitors. Columbus gave him some little bells and glass
beads, with which he was much pleased. The Admiral asked him for water,
and they brought it gladly to the shore in calabashes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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