Columbus christened his little coral island San Salvador. The natives called it Guanahani; but should you look for it on your map you may not find it under either its native or its Spanish name, for there was no way, at that early date, of making an accurate map of the whole Bahama group, and the name San Salvador somehow became shifted in time to another island. Thus was the original landfall long lost sight of, and no two writers could agree on the subject. Recently, however, the most careful students have decided upon the reef now called Watling's Island, to-day an English possession, as Columbus's first landing-place.

When you see that it is but a tiny dot in the ocean, you may think it an insignificant spot to have been the scene of the most momentous event of the Renaissance; you may feel inclined to scold at that well-meaning Martin Pinzon for asking to have the rudders changed in order to find his Cipango. But it must be remembered that to have found anything at all was an unparalleled feat; and furthermore, that wee San Salvador was not the end of Columbus's expedition; it was merely the beginning, merely the lighting of that great torch of enterprise and investigation which was not to be extinguished till the whole American continent and the whole Pacific Ocean had been explored and mapped out. Columbus that day started an electric current through the brain of every European mariner. To discover something across the Atlantic was henceforth in the very air, and the results were tremendous.

But to return to those happy Spanish sailors who on that October morn of 1492 at last planted their feet on terra firma. To explore the little island did not take long. They found it to be full of green trees and strange luscious fruits. There were no beasts, large or small, only gay parrots. The natives, guiltless of clothing, were gentle creatures who supposed their strange visitors had come from Heaven and reverenced them accordingly. As the two groups stood looking at each other for the first time, the natives must have been by far the more astonished. Spanish eyes were used to races other than the white; they all knew the brownish Moor; and alas, many of them knew the black Ethiopian too; for, once the Portuguese started slave-snatching down the African coast, the Spaniards became their customers, so that by this time, 1492, there were a good many African slaves in Spain. But the Bahama natives knew of no race but their own; so what could these undreamed-of visitors be but divine? Here is Columbus's own description of what happened when the white man and the red man had scraped acquaintance with each other:—

"As I saw that they were very friendly to us, and perceived that they could be much more easily converted to our holy faith by gentle means than by force, I presented them with some red caps and strings of beads to wear upon the neck, and many other trifles of small value, wherewith they were much delighted and became greatly attached to us. Afterwards they came swimming to the boats, bringing parrots, balls of cotton thread, javelins, and many other things which they exchanged for glass beads and hawks' bells, which trade was carried on with the utmost good will. But they seemed on the whole a very poor people. They all were completely naked. All whom I saw were young, not above thirty years of age, well made and with fine shapes and faces; their hair short and coarse like that of a horse's tail, combed towards the forehead except a small portion which they suffer to hang down behind and never cut. Some paint themselves with black, others with white, others with red, others with such colors as they can find. Some paint the face, some the whole body. Others only the eyes, others only the nose. Weapons they have none; nor are they acquainted with them. For I showed them swords which they grasped by the blades and cut themselves through ignorance. They have no iron, their javelins being without it, and no thing more than sticks with fishbones or other thing at the ends. I saw some men with scars of wounds upon their bodies and inquired by signs the cause of these. They answered me by signs that other people came from islands in the neighborhood and tried to make prisoners of them and they defended themselves. ….It appears to me that these people are ingenious and would make very good servants, and I am of the opinion that they would readily become Christians as they appear to have no religion. They very quickly learn such words as are spoken to them. If it please our Lord, I intend at my return to carry home six of them to your Highnesses that they may learn our language."

In this brief entry in the Admiral's diary there is a whole volume to those who can read between the lines, and a painful volume too, as much history is. Glass beads and little tinkling bells, you see, were all ready to be distributed from the caravels; a proof that Columbus had not expected to reach the Asiatic Indies, for those Indians were known to be sharp and experienced traders. How did Columbus happen to know that it would be wise to carry rubbish along with him? Ah, that was something found out when he left Porto Santo to accompany the Portuguese expedition to Guinea; had he not seen the Portuguese commander exchange ounces of bright beads for pounds of ivory and gold?

And so he, Christopher Columbus, came prepared for similar trade in his western lands; the world, we see, was hunting for bargains, trying to get much for little in the fifteenth century, just as it still is in the twentieth! Then again, look at the Admiral's innocent remark, "I think they would make excellent servants." That is still the rule to-day; the trained man sees in the untrained only a servant. It was perfectly natural that the Spanish eye should instantly see that little island converted into a Spanish plantation with those simple, gentle creatures who "learn easily" working it. And lastly, let us look into this sentence: "I intend taking some of them home to show your Majesties." It never occurred to the Admiral to add, "if they are willing to come with me." Indeed, it seldom occurred to any Christian of Christopher Columbus's day that a non-Christian, and especially a savage one, had the same human instincts as a Christian, and that he would have preferred staying in his own land and with his own family. Out of that horrible but common mistake grew up the whole miserable business of kidnapping, buying, and selling human beings. Let us not be too greatly shocked at our fifteenth-century hero for talking so unfeelingly. Remember, it was only about fifty years ago that we saw the last of slavery in these United States, and even then it died hard. Christopher was, on most moral questions, merely a man of his time, a fact to be kept in mind as we read of his later voyages.

"They answered me by signs," wrote Columbus. In other words, the linguist of the expedition, the man learned in Asiatic tongues, had not been able to make himself understood on San Salvador; and neither was he when they sailed on among the other islands. Clearly, these little specks of land in the ocean were not the large and extravagantly rich island of Japan which Martin Alonzo Pinzon had hoped to find. When Columbus asked these friendly people for "Cipango," they looked blank and shook their heads; so did all the other islanders he met during his three months' cruise among the West Indies. All of the new-found people were of the same race, spoke the same language, and were equally ignorant of Cipango and Cathay and India,—lands of rich cities and temples and marble bridges, and pearls and gold. Columbus had found only "a poor people," with no clothes and hardly a sign of a golden ornament. True, when he "inquired by signs" where their few golden trinkets came from, they pointed vaguely to the south as if some richer land lay there. And so the Admiral, as we must now call him, never gave up hope. If, as Pinzon still believed, they had discovered Asiatic islands, somewhere on the mainland he must surely come upon those treasures which the Moors had been bringing overland by caravan for centuries past. He could not go for the treasure this trip; this was nothing more than a simple voyage of discovery; but he would come and find the wealth that would enable the Spanish monarchs to undertake a new crusade to the Holy Land.

October ran into November and November into December, and the Admiral was still finding islands. He had come, on October 21, to such a far- reaching coast that he agreed with Martin Pinzon that it must be the mainland, or Cathay, and started eagerly to follow it west. But the natives near the shore were timid and fled at the approach of the strangers. No splendid cities of marble palaces, nor even any mean little villages of huts, were in sight; so two of the sailors were sent inland to explore and find the capital of the country. After three days the explorers returned and reported that all they had seen were many, many naked savages who dwelt in tiny huts of wood and straw, and who had the curious custom of rolling up a large dry leaf called tobago, lighting it at one end, and drawing the smoke up through their nostrils. Obviously, another "poor people" like those of San Salvador; they were not the rich and civilized Chinese that Marco Polo had written about. Neither capital nor king had they, and their land, they told the explorers, was surrounded by water. They called it Colba. It was, in fact, the modern Cuba which Columbus had discovered.

Instead of continuing west along Cuba's northern shore till he came to the end of it, the Admiral preferred to turn east and see what lay in that direction. It was one of the few times when Columbus's good judgment in navigation deserted him; for had he kept west he might have learned from the natives that what we call Florida lay beyond, and Florida was the continent; or, even if the natives had nothing to communicate, west would have been the logical direction for him to take after leaving the extremity of Cuba, had he fully shared Pinzon's belief that Asia lay beyond the islands. But no, without waiting to get to the extremity of Cuba, Columbus retraced his course east, as if expecting to find there the one, definite thing which, according to his friend, Las Casas, he had come to find.

On November 12 he writes: "A canoe came out to the ship with sixteen young men; five of them climbed aboard, whom I ordered to be kept so as to have them with us; I then sent ashore to one of the houses and took seven women and three children; this I did in order that the five men might tolerate their captivity better with company." No doubt he treated the natives kindly, but one can readily understand that their families and friends back on the island must have felt outraged at this conduct on the white man's part.

The strange thing is that Columbus, so wise in many ways, did not understand it too, in spite of the miserably mean ideas which prevailed in his day regarding the heathen. But the very fact that he notes so frankly how he captured the natives shows that neither he, nor those who were to read his journal, had any scruples on the subject. All moral considerations aside, it was tactless indeed to treat the natives thus in islands where he hoped to have his own men kindly received.

On Cuba the boats were calked and scraped, and the Admiral superintended the operations. He was always a busy, busy man, on land or sea. Being a great lover of nature, he left this nautical business for a while and traveled a few days inland; and of every native he met he asked that same question that he had been asking among all these lovely islands, "Is there any gold or pearls or spices?" No, that land lies west, far west; thus Columbus understood the sign answer; but after following a native in that direction for a long time, he had to give it up, for the time being. When he returned to the beach, Martin Pinzon showed him a big stick of cinnamon wood for which, in his absence, one of the sailors had traded a handful of beads.

"The native had quantities of it," Martin assured his Admiral.

"Then why didn't the sailor get it all?"

"Because," and here Martin grew malicious, "you ordered that they could trade only a little, so that you could do most of it yourself!"

And now the native had gone, and the rueful Admiral never saw him nor his cinnamon again!

At last, sailing along Cuba, he came to its end; and from there he could see another island eighteen leagues off. This was what we call Haiti, or San Domingo. The ships sailed over to Haiti, and the Admiral was so pleased with its aspect that he christened it Hispaniola, or little Hispania, which is Latin for Spain; but as Spain is called by its own people Espana, Hispaniola soon became Espanola.