ships instead of with four.
At this moment, while he was waiting for the ship to be completed,
Columbus heard a piece of news of a kind that never failed to rouse his
interest. There was a young Spaniard named Miguel Diaz who had got into
disgrace in Isabella some time before on account of a duel, and had
wandered into the island until he had come out on the south coast at the
mouth of the river Ozama, near the site of the present town of Santo
Domingo. There he had fallen in love with a female cacique and had made
his home with her. She, knowing the Spanish taste, and anxious to please
her lover and to retain him in her territory, told him of some rich
gold-mines that there were in the neighbourhood, and suggested that he
should inform the Admiral, who would perhaps remove the settlement from
Isabella to the south coast. She provided him with guides and sent him
off to Isabella, where, hearing that his antagonist had recovered, and
that he himself was therefore in no danger of punishment, he presented
himself with his story.
Columbus immediately despatched Bartholomew with a party to examine the
mines; and sure enough they found in the river Hayna undoubted evidence
of a wealth far in excess of that contained in the Cibao gold-mines.
Moreover, they had noticed two ancient excavations about which the
natives could tell them nothing, but which made them think that the mines
had once been worked.
Columbus was never backward in fitting a story and a theory to whatever
phenomena surrounded him; and in this case he was certain that the
excavations were the work of Solomon, and that he had discovered the gold
of Ophir. "Sure enough," thinks the Admiral, "I have hit it this time;
and the ships came eastward from the Persian Gulf round the Golden
Chersonesus, which I discovered this very last winter." Immediately, as
his habit was, Columbus began to build castles in Spain. Here was a fine
answer to Buil and Margarite! Without waiting a week or two to get any
of the gold this extraordinary man decided to hurry off at once to Spain
with the news, not dreaming that Spain might, by this time, have had a
surfeit of news, and might be in serious need of some simple, honest
facts. But he thought his two caravels sufficiently freighted with this
new belief--the belief that he had discovered the Ophir of Solomon.
The Admiral sailed on March 10th, 1496, carrying with him in chains the
vanquished Caonabo and other nativ
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