The song through all heaven's arches ran, And told the wondrous tales aloud, The trembling fire that looked so wan, The weeping sun behind the cloud, A God, a God become a man! A mortal man become a God. --_Violante Do Ceo._ CHAPTER IX. [Illustration] YULE-TIDE IN AMERICA "And they who do their souls no wrong, But keep, at eve, the faith of morn. Shall daily hear the angel-song, 'To-day the Prince of Peace is born.'" --_James Russell Lowell._ To people who go into a new country to live, Christmas, which is so generally a family day, must of necessity be a lonely, homesick one. They carry with them the memory of happy customs, of loved ones far away, and of observances which can never be held again. So many of the earliest Christmasses in America were peculiarly sad ones to the various groups of settlers; most especially was this the case with the first Christmas ever spent by Europeans in the New World. The intrepid mariner, Christopher Columbus, entered the port of Bohio, in the Island of Hayti, on St. Nicholas Day, December 6, 1492, and in honor of the day named that port Saint Nicholas. The _Pinta_ with her crew had parted from the others and gone her own way, so the _Santa Maria_ and the _Nina_ sailed on together, occasionally stopping where the port seemed inviting. While in one of these, Columbus heard of rich mines not far distant and started for them. The Admiral and his men were tired from continued watching, and as the sea was smooth and the wind favorable, they went to sleep leaving the ship in care of a boy. Who he was no one knows, but he was evidently the first Christian boy to pass a Christmas Eve on this continent,--and a sad one it was for him. The ship struck a sand-bank and settled, a complete wreck, in the waters of the New World. Fortunately no lives were lost, and the wreckage furnished material for the building of a fortress which occupied the men's time during the remainder of the Yule-tide. The _Nina_ was too small to accommodate two crews, therefore on Christmas Day many of the men were wondering who were to stay on that far-away island among the strange looking natives of whom they knew nothing.