The Earthly Paradise Revisited - 2

The Earthly Paradise Revisited - 2

 Relations between the Admiral and the cacique, although outwardly cordial, were

altogether different from what they had been in, the happy days after their first meeting;

the man seemed to shrink from all the evidence of Spanish power, and when they

proposed to hang a cross round his neck the native king, much as he loved trinkets and

toys, expressed a horror and fear of this jewel when he learned that it was an emblem of

the Christian faith. He had seen a little too much of the Christian religion; and Heaven

only knows with what terror and depression the emblem of the cross inspired him. He

went ashore; and when a messenger was sent to search for him a few days afterwards, it

was found that he had moved his whole establishment into the interior of the island. The

beautiful native woman Catalina escaped to shore and disappeared at the same time; and

the two events were connected in the minds of some of the Spaniards, and held, wrongly

as it turned out, to be significant of a deep plot of native treachery.

The most urgent need was to build the new settlement and lay out a town. Several small

parties were sent out to reconnoitre the coast in both directions, but none of them found a

suitable place; and on December 7th the whole fleet sailed to the east in the hope of

finding a better position. They were driven by adverse winds into a harbour some thirty

miles to the east of Monte Christi, and when they went ashore they decided that this was

as good a site as any for the new town. There was about a quarter of a mile of level sandy

beach enclosed by headlands on either side; there was any amount of rock and stones for

building, and there was a natural barrier of hills and mountains a mile or so inland that

would protect a camp from that side.—The soil was very fertile, the vegetation luxuriant;

and the mango swamps a little way inland drained into a basin or lake which provided an

unlimited water supply. Columbus therefore set about establishing a little town, to which

he gave the name of Isabella. Streets and squares were laid out, and rows of temporary

buildings made of wood and thatched with grass were hastily run up for the

accommodation of the members of the expedition, while the foundations of three stone

buildings were also marked out and the excavations put in hand. These buildings were the

church, the storehouse, and a residence for Columbus as Governor-General. The stores

were landed, the horses and cattle accommodated ashore, the provisions, ammunition,

and agricultural implements also. Labourers were set to digging out the foundations of

the stone buildings, carpenters to cutting down trees and running up the light wooden

houses that were to serve as barracks for the present; masons were employed in hewing

stones and building landing-piers; and all the crowd of well-born adventurers were set to

work with their hands, much to their disgust. This was by no means the life they had

imagined, and at the first sign of hard work they turned sulky and discontented. There

was, to be sure, some reason for their discontent. Things had not quite turned out as

Columbus had promised they should; there was no store of gold, nor any sign of great

desire on the part of the natives to bring any; and to add to their other troubles, illness

began to break out in the camp. The freshly-turned rank soil had a bad effect on the

health of the garrison; the lake, which had promised to be so pleasant a feature in the new

town, gave off dangerous malarial vapours at night; and among the sufferers from this

trouble was Columbus himself, who endured for some weeks all the pains and lassitude

of the disagreeable fever.

The ships were now empty and ready for the return voyage, and as soon as Columbus

was better he set to work to face the situation. After all his promises it would never do to

send them home empty or in ballast; a cargo of stones from the new-found Indies would

not be well received in Spain. The natives had told him that somewhere in the island

existed the gold mines of Cibao, and he determined to make an attempt to find these, so

that he could send his ships home laden with a cargo that would be some indemnity for

the heavy cost of the expedition and some compensation for the bad news he must write

with regard to his first settlement. Young Ojeda was chosen to lead an expedition of

fifteen picked men into the interior; and as the gold mines were said to be in a part of the

island not under the command of Guacanagari, but in the territory of the dreaded

Caonabo, there was no little anxiety felt about the expedition.

Ojeda started in the beginning of January 1494, and marched southwards through dense

forests until, having crossed a mountain range, he came down into a beautiful and fertile

valley, where they were hospitably received by the natives. They saw plenty of gold in

the sand of the river that watered the valley, which sand the natives had a way of washing

so that the gold was separated from it; and there seemed to be so much wealth there that

Ojeda hurried back to the new city of Isabella to make his report to Columbus. The effect

upon the discontented colonists was remarkable. Once more everything was right; wealth

beyond the dreams of avarice was at their hand; and all they had to do was to stretch out

their arms and take it. Columbus felt that he need no longer delay the despatch of twelve

of his ships on the homeward voyage. If he had not got golden cargoes for them, at any

rate he had got the next best thing, which was the certainty of gold; and it did not matter

whether it was in the ships or in his storehouse. He had news to send home at any rate,

and a great variety of things to ask for in return, and he therefore set about writing his

report to the Sovereigns. Other people, as we know, were writing letters too; the

reiterated promise of gold, and the marvellous anecdotes which these credulous settlers

readily believed from the natives, such as that there was a rock close by out of which gold

would burst if you struck it with a club, raised greed and expectation in Spain to a fever

pitch, and prepared the reaction which followed.

We may now read the account of the New World as Columbus sent it home to the King

and Queen of Spain in the end of January 1494, and as they read it some weeks later.

Their comments, written in the margin of the original, are printed in smaller print at the

end of each paragraph. It was drawn up in the form of a memorandum, an