sland long previously, and they without doubt earned
gold away from it. The Spaniards were deceived by the Haytians, who
did not wish to dig gold under the lash to glitter on the velvet of
_hidalgos_.

It is difficult, as Humboldt says, to distinguish, in the calculations
by the Spanish writers of the amount of gold sent to Spain, "between
that obtained by washings and that which had been accumulated for ages
in the hands of the natives, who were pillaged at will." He inclines,
however, to the opinion, that a scientific system of mining would renew
the supply of gold, which may not be represented by the scanty washings
that have been occasionally tried in Hayti and Cuba. In Hayti, "as well
as at Brazil, it would be more profitable to attempt subterraneous
workings, on veins, in primitive and intermediary soils, than to renew
the gold-washings which were abandoned in the ages of barbarism, rapine,
and carnage."[F]

[Footnote F: _Personal Narrative_, Vol. III. p. 163, note. Bohn's
Series.]

But the chief interest which Spain took in Hayti was derived from
the collars and bracelets which shone dully against the skins of the
caciques and native women in the streets of Seville. It did not require
an exhausted treasury, and the clamor of a Neapolitan war for sinews,
to stimulate the appetite of a nation whose sensibility for gold was as
great as its superstition. Columbus triumphed over the imaginations of
men through their avarice; the procession of his dusky captives to the
feet of Isabella was as if the Earth-Spirit, holding a masque to tempt
Catholic majesties to the ruin of the mine, sent his familiars, "with
the earth-tint yet so freshly embrowned," to flatter with heron-crests,
the plumes of parrots, and the yellow ore. Behind that naked pomp the
well-doubleted nobles of Castile and Aragon trooped gayly with priests
and crosses, the pyx and the pax, and all the symbols of a holy Passion,
to crime and death.

Columbus discovered Guanahani, which he named San Salvador, on the
morning of the 12th of October, 1492. After cruising among these Lucayan
Islands, or Bahamas, for some time, he reached Cuba on the 28th of the
same month. His Lucayan interpreters were understood by the natives of
Cuba, notwithstanding they spoke a different dialect. They were also
understood at Hayti, which was reached on the 6th of December; but here
the Cuban interpreter was found to be more useful. Each island appeared
to have a dialect of