1492

FOREST endless and splendid! We white men often saw no path, but the red-brown men saw it. It ran level, it climbed, it descended; then began the three again. It was lost, it wa...

TWO years! It was March, 1496, when he sailed in the _Nina_. It was the summer of 1498 when Juan Lepe was sent as physician with two ships put forth from San Domingo by the Adel...

DUSK was drawing down as I stole with little trouble out of the house into the street and thence into the maze of Santa Fe. That night I slept with minstrels and jugglers, and a...

Of all these lands, outside of the low, small islands to which we came first, Cuba seemed to us the peaceable land. Jamaica gave us almost Carib welcome. Its folk had the larges...

THE Admiral set a watch and commanded all beside to sleep. To-morrow might be work and wakefulness enough! The ship grew silent. With the _Pinta_ and the Nina it lay under the m...

ONE by one were incoming, were folding wings, were anchoring, Spanish ships. Three were larger each than the _Santa Maria_ and the _Pinta_ together; the others caravels of varyi...

UP and down went the great Roldan scission. Up and down went Indian revolt, repression, fresh revolt, fresh repression. On flowed time. Ships came in, one bearing Don Diego; shi...

PALOS vanished, we lost the headland of La Rabida, a haze hid Spain. By nightfall all was behind us. We were set forth from native land, set forth from Europe, set forth from Ch...

WE were a long, long way from Spain. A flight of birds went over us. They were flying too high for distinguishing, but we did not hold them to be sea birds. We sounded, but the...

WE turned from the sea. Thick forest came between us and it. We were going with Caonabo to the mountains. Beltran and I thought that it had been in question whether he should ki...

MARTIN PINZON did not return to us. That tall, blond sea captain was gone we knew not where. The _Santa Maria_ and the Nina sailed south along the foot of Cuba. But now rose out...

JUAN LEPE, quitting the Vega of Granada, recrossed the mountains. I was at wander. I did not go to Malaga. I did not then go to Palos. I went to San Lucar. I had adventures, but...

TWO men came into the cabin, Don Diego Colon, left in charge of Hispaniola, and with him a tall, powerful, high-featured man, gray of eye and black and silver of hair and short...

THE weather plagued us. The rains were cataracts, the lightning blinding, the thunder loud enough to wake the dead. Day after day, until this weather grew to seem a veritable Wi...

THE day passed. I had adventures of the road, but none of consequence. I slept well among the rocks, waked, ate the bit of bread I had with me, and fell again to walking.

JUAN LEPE lay upon the sand beyond Palos. The Admiral was with the court in Granada, but his physician, craving holiday, had borne a letter to Juan Perez, the Prior of _Santa Ma...

THERE grew at times an excited feeling that he was a prophet, and that there were fabulously great things before us. As I doctored some small ill one day in the forecastle, a gr...

PUERTO BELLO! Beautiful truly, and a harbor where might ride a navy. But no gold; and now came back very evilly the evil weather. Seven days a blast rocked us. We strained eyes...

IT did not lighten. Escobedo waited two days, then in the dark night, corrupting the watch, broke gaol for Pedro Gutierrez and with him and nine men quitted La Navidad. Beltran...

SOME days went by. The King and the Queen with the court and a great train of prelates and grandees and knights rode in state through Granada. Don Enrique, returning, told me of...

WE sailed for two days east by south. But the weather that had been perfection for long and long again from Palos, now was changed. Dead winds delayed us, the sea ridged, clouds...

The Indians around us still were friendly--women and all. From the first there was straying in the woods with Indian women. Doubtless now, in the San Salvador islands, in Cuba a...

THE caravel tossed in a heavy storm. Some of her mariners were old in these waters, but others, coming out with Bobadilla, had little knowledge of our breadths of Ocean-Sea. The...

THE morning was gray and I sat by the sea near Palos in a gray mood. I was Jayme de Marchena, and that was a good, _old Christian_ name. But my grandmother was Jewess, and in co...

THE butio of this town had been absent for some reason in the great wood those days of the shipwreck and the building of La Navidad. Now he was again here, and I consorted with...

THE ships were the _Consolacion_, the _Margarita_, the _Juana_ and the _San Sebastian_, all caravels and small ones, the _Consolacion_ the largest and the flagship. The _Margari...

GUACANAGARI’S town was much perhaps as was Goth town, Frank town, Saxon town, Latin town, sufficient time ago. As for clothed and unclothed, that may be to some degree a matter...

THE door giving upon the great corridor opened. One said, “The King, Madam!” King Ferdinand entered quietly, in the sober fashion of a sober and able man. He was cool and balanc...

SANTA Fe rose before me, a camp in wood, plaster and stone, a camp with a palace, a camp with churches. Built of a piece where no town had stood, built that Majesty and its Cour...

IT did not end the war. For a fortnight we thought that it had done so. Then came loud tidings. Caonabo’s wife, Anacaona, had put on the lioness. With her was Caonabo’s brother...

AN hour after moonrise we were gone from Gomera. At first a light wind filled the sails, but when the round moon went down in the west and the sun rose, there was Teneriffe stil...

RISING at dawn, I walked to the sea and along it until I came at last to those dunes beneath which I had stretched myself that day of grayness. Now it was deep summer, blue and...

IN the small, small cabin of the _Nina_ Christopherus Columbus sat for a time with his head bowed in his arms, then rose and made up a mission to go to the cacique Guacanagari a...

In this ship were two sets of captives, animals brought from Spain and Indians from those fiercer islands to the south. The _Monsalvat_ that was a freight ship had many animals,...

IT was a strange thing how utterly favoring now was the wind! It blew with a great steady push always from the east, and always we ran before it into the west. Day after day we...

We were sea specters. We had saved our men from the _San Sebastian_ as from the _Margarita_. Now all were upon the _Consolacion_ and the _Juana_. Fifty fewer were we than when w...

CUBA! At first he called it Juana, but we came afterwards still to use the Indian name. Cuba! We saw it after three days, and it was little enough like Isabella, Fernandina, Con...

THE Indians called it Guanaja, but the Admiral, the Isle of Pines. It was far, far, from Hispaniola, far, far, from Jamaica, over a wide and stormy sea, reached after many days...

WE were in a throng of islands. We might drop all for a little while, then from masthead “Land ho!” None were great islands, many far smaller than San Salvador. At night we lay...

CHRISTMASTIDE, a year from the sinking of the _Santa Maria_, came to nigh two thousand Christian men dwelling in some manner of houses by a river in a land that, so short time b...

AT first, the day before, we had not made out that the Indians had boats. Later, straying here and there, we had seen them drawn upon the shore and covered with boughs of trees....

THE Admiral took it with some Italian words under breath. Then he wheeled and left the cabin. A minute later I heard the master from the _Consolacion_ hail the _Margarita_ that...

DON FERNANDO met me at the door. “He is wandering--he thinks he is in Cordova with my mother.” He came from that and said he would get up and go to mass. Persuaded to lie quiet,...

IT was Seville, and an inn there, and the Admiral of the Ocean-Sea laid in a fair enough room. His gout manacled him, and another sickness crept upon him, but he could think, ta...

“I myself,” he said presently, “have gone by sea to Vigo and to Bordeaux.” He warmed his hands at the fire, then clasped them about his knees and gazed into the night. “What, Ju...

SET will to an end and promptly eyes open to means! I did not start for Granada from Palos but from Huelva, and I quitted Andalusia as a porter in a small merchant train carryin...