The Life of Christopher Columbus

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Search for Gold

“I determined to wait till the next afternoon, and then to start for the southwest, for many of them told me that there was land to the south and southwest and northwest, and that those from the northwest came often to fight with them, and so to go on to the southwest to seek gold and precious stones.

“This island is very large and very flat, with very green trees, many waters and a very large lake in the midst, without any mountain. All of it is green, so that it is a pleasure to see it. These people are so gentle, and desirous to have our articles, thinking that nothing can be given them unless they give something and do not keep it back. They take what they can, and at once jump [into the water] and swim [away]. But all that they have they give for whatever is given them. For they barter even for pieces of porringus, and of broken glass cups, so that I saw sixteen skeins of cotton given for three Portuguese centis, that is a blanca of Castile, and there was more than twenty-five pounds of spun cotton in them. This I shall forbid, and not let anyone take [it]; but I shall have it all taken for your Highnesses, if there is any quantity of it.

“It grows here in this island, but for a short time I could not believe it at all. And there is found here also the gold which they wear hanging to their noses; but so as not to lose time I mean to go to see whether I can reach the island of Cipango.

“Now as it was night they all went ashore with their almadias.”

Sunday, October 14. “At daybreak I had the ship’s boat and the boats of the caravels made ready, and I sailed along the island, toward the north-northeast, to see the other port, what there was [there], and also to see the towns, and I soon saw two or three, and the people, who all were coming to the shore, calling us and giving thanks to God. Some brought us water, others things to eat. Others, when they saw that I did not care to go ashore, threw themselves into the sea and came swimming, and we understood that they asked us if we had come from heaven. An old man came into the boat, and others called all [the rest] men and women, with a loud voice: ‘Come and see the men who have come from heaven; bring them food and drink.’

“There came many of them and many women, each one with something, giving thanks to God, casting themselves on the ground, and raising their heads toward heaven. And afterwards they called us with shouts to come ashore.

“But I feared [to do so], for I saw a great reef of rocks which encircles all that island. And in it there is bottom and harbor for as many ships as there are in all Christendom, and its entrance very narrow. It is true that there are some shallows inside this ring, but the sea is no rougher than in a well.

“And I was moved to see all this, this morning, so that I might be able to give an account of it all to your Highnesses, and also [to find out] where I might make a fortress. And I saw a piece of land formed like an island, although it is not one, in which there were six houses, which could be cut off in two days so as to become an island; although I do not see that it is necessary, as this people is very ignorant of arms, as your Highnesses will see from seven whom I had taken, to carry them off to learn our speech and to bring them back again. But your Highnesses, when you direct, can take them all to Castile, or keep them captives in this same island, for with fifty men you can keep them all subjected, and make them do whatever you like.

“And close to the said islet are groves of trees, the most beautiful I have seen, and as green and full of leaves as those of Castile in the months of April and May, and much water.

“I looked at all that harbor and then I returned to the ship and set sail, and I saw so many islands that I could not decide to which I should go first. And those men whom I had taken said to me by signs that there were so very many that they were without number, and they repeated by name more than a hundred. At last I set sail for the largest one, and there I determined to go. And so I am doing, and it will be five leagues from the island of San Salvador, and farther from some of the rest, nearer to others. They all are very flat, without mountains and very fertile, and all inhabited. And they make war upon each other although they are very simple, and [they are] very beautifully formed.”

Monday, October 15, Columbus, on arriving at the island for which he had set sail, went on to a cape, near which he anchored at about sunset. He gave the island the name of Santa Maria de la Concepcion.

This is supposed to be Caico del Norte.

“At about sunset I anchored near the said cape to know if there were gold there, for the men whom I had taken at the Island of San Salvador told me that there they wore very large rings of gold on their legs and arms. I think that all they said was for a trick, in order to make their escape. However, I did not wish to pass by any island without taking possession of it.

“And I anchored, and was there till today, Tuesday, when at the break of day I went ashore with the armed boats, and landed.

“They [the inhabitants], who were many, as naked and in the same condition as those of San Salvador, let us land on the island, and gave us what we asked of them.

“I set out for the ship. And there was a large almadia which had come to board the caravel Niña, and one of the men from the Island of San Salvador threw himself into the sea, took this boat, and made off; and the night before, at midnight, another jumped out. The almadia went back so fast that there never was a boat which could come up with her, although we had a considerable advantage. It reached the shore, and they left the almadia, and some of my company landed after them, and they all fled like hens.

“The almadia, which they had left, we took to the caravel Niña, to which from another headland there was coming another little almadia, with a man who came to barter a skein of cotton. Some of the sailors threw themselves into the sea, because he did not wish to enter the caravel, and took him. I, who was on the stern of the ship, saw it all, sent for him and gave him a red cap and some little green glass beads which I put on his arm, and two small bells which I put at his ears, and I had his almadia returned, and sent him ashore.

I set sail at once to go to the other large island which I saw at the west, and commanded the other almadia to be set adrift, which the caravel Niña was towing astern. And then I saw on land, when the man landed, to whom I had given the above mentioned things (and I had not consented to take the skein of cotton, though he wished to give it to me), all the others went to him and thought it a great wonder, and it seemed to them that we were good people, and that the other man, who had fled, had done us some harm, and that therefore we were carrying him off. And this was why I treated the other man as I did, commanding him to be released, and gave him the said things, so that they might have this opinion of us, and so that another time, when your Highnesses send here again, they may be well disposed. And all that I gave him was not worth four maravedis.”

Columbus had set sail at ten o’clock for a “large island” he mentions, which he called Fernandina, where, from the tales of the Indian captives, he expected to find gold. Half way between this island and Santa Maria, he met with “a man alone in an almadia which was passing” [from one island to the other], “and he was carrying a little of their bread, as big as one’s fist, a calabash of water and a piece of red earth made into dust, then kneaded, and some dry leaves, which must be a thing much valued among them, since at San Salvador they brought them to me as a present. And he had a little basket of their sort, in which he had a string of little glass bells and two blancas, by which I knew that he came from the Island of San Salvador. He came to the ship; I took him on board, for so he asked, and made him put his almadia in the ship, and keep all he was carrying. I commanded to give him bread and honey to eat, and something to drink.

Was this perhaps tobacco?

“And thus I will take him over to Fernandina, and I will give him all his property so that he may give good accounts of us, so that, if it please our Lord, when your Highnesses send there, those who come may receive honor, and they may give us of all they have.”

Columbus continued sailing for the island he named Fernandina, now called Inagua Chica. There was a calm all day and he did not arrive in time to anchor safely before dark. He therefore waited till morning, and anchored near a town. Here the man had gone, who had been picked up the day before, and he had given such good accounts that all night long the ship had been boarded by almadias, bringing supplies. Columbus directed some trifle to be given to each of the islanders, and that they should be given “honey of sugar” to eat. He sent the ship’s boat ashore for water and the inhabitants not only pointed it out but helped to put the water-casks on board.

“This people,” he says, “is like those of the aforesaid islands, and has the same speech and the same customs, except that these seem to me a somewhat more domestic race, and more intelligent. And I saw also in this island cotton cloths made like mantles.

“It is a very green island and flat, very fertile, and I have no doubt that all the year through they sow panizo (panic-grass) and harvest it, and so with everything else. And I saw many trees, of very different form from ours, and many of them which had branches of many sorts, and all on one trunk. And one branch is of one sort and one of another, and so different that it is the greatest wonder in the world. One branch has its leaves like canes, and another like the lentisk; and so on one tree five or six of these kinds; and all so different. Nor are they grafted, for it might be said that grafting does it, but they grow on the mountains, nor do these people care for them.

“Here the fishes are so different from ours that it is wonderful. There are some like cocks of the finest colors in the world, blue, yellow, red and of all colors, and others painted in a thousand ways. And the colors are so fine that there is no man who does not wonder at them and take great pleasure in seeing them. Also, there are whales. As for wild creatures on shore, I saw none of any sort, except parrots and lizards; a boy told me that he saw a great snake. Neither sheep nor goats nor any other animal did I see; although I have been here a very short time, that is, half a day, but if there had been any I could not have failed to see some of them.”

Wednesday, October 17. He left the town at noon and prepared to sail round the island. He had meant to go by the south and southeast. But as Martin Alonzo Pinzon, captain of the Pinta, had heard, from one of the Indians he had on board, that it would be quicker to start by the northwest, and as the wind was favorable for this course, Columbus took it. He found a fine harbor two leagues further on, where he found some friendly Indians, and sent a party ashore for water. “During this time,” he says, “I went [to look at] these trees, which were the most beautiful things to see which have been seen; there was as much verdure in the same degree as in the month of May in Andalusia, and all the trees were as different from ours as the day from the night. And so [were] the fruits, and the herbs, and the stones and everything. The truth is that some trees had a resemblance to others which there are in Castile, but there was a very great difference. And other trees of other sorts were such that there is no one who could liken them to others of Castile.

“The others who went for water told me how they had been in their houses, and that they were very well swept and clean, and their beds and furniture [made] of things which are like nets of cotton.Their houses are all like pavilions, and very high and good chimneys.

They are called Hamacas.

Las Casas says they were not meant for smoke but as a crown, for they have no opening below for the smoke.

“But I did not see, among many towns which I saw, any of more than twelve or fifteen houses. And there they had dogs. And there they found one man who had on his nose a piece of gold which was like half a castellano, on which there were cut letters. I blamed them for not bargaining for it, and giving as much as was asked, to see what it was, and whose coin it was; and they answered me that they did not dare to barter it.”

A castellano was a piece of gold, money, weighing about one-sixth of an ounce.

He continued towards the northwest, then turned his course to the east-southeast, east and southeast. The weather being thick and heavy, and “threatening immediate rain. So all these days since I have been in these Indies it has rained little or much.”

Friday, October 19. Columbus, who had not landed the day before, now sent two caravels, one to the east and southeast and the other to the south-southeast, while he himself, with the Santa Maria, the SHIP, as he calls it, went to the southeast. He ordered the caravels to keep their courses till noon, and then join him. This they did, at an island to the east, which he named Isabella, the Indians whom he had with him calling it Saomete. It has been supposed to be the island now called Inagua Grande.

“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.

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