like friars. The man fled in fear. When
his comrades returned with him to find this white company, not a
human being appeared to them, and, except for the chatter of birds
and the clicking of land-crabs as they scuttled over the stones,
the place was still. The coast Indians were understood to say
that among the mountains dwelt a chief whom they called a saint,
who wore a flowing robe of white and never spoke aloud, ordering
his subjects by signs. This was surely Prester John, the shadowy
king of a shadowy kingdom, of whom much was said and written a few
centuries ago. He was declared by one author to rule a part of India
and was reputed to be a Nestorian priest who had made himself king
of the Naymans. Other travellers placed him in China, Persia, and
Timbuctoo. In a battle with the infidel Tartars Prester John mounted
a number of bronze men on horseback, each figure belching clouds of
smoke from a fire of punk within, and lashed the horses against the
enemy, filling them with such terror, and so veiling in smoke the
dash of his flesh and blood cavalry, that his victory was easy. So,
it was a great satisfaction to Columbus to think that he had reached
the confines of a Christian kingdom.

While working through the thousand little islands off the southern
coast of Cuba, that he called the Queen's Gardens, Columbus found
added reason for believing that this was the Asiatic shore, and he
hoped shortly to reach Cipango, or Japan, where pearls and precious
stones abounded, and where the king abode in a palace covered with
plates of gold more than an inch thick. The attempts of the Mongols to
overrun the Asian islands were defeated, because the Cipangalese were
invulnerable, having placed between the skin and the flesh of their
right arms a little stone that made them safe against swords, arrows,
clubs, and slings. The people of Cuba fell too easy a prey to Spanish
blades--of both sorts--to allow a belief like this to last long.

That Columbus thought he was approaching the earthly paradise, the
mountain-guarded Eden where our first parents lived, when he neared
these lovely shores, inhaled the fragrance of fruits and flowers,
heard the cries of birds and saw the flash of bright waters, is
probable. That paradise he sought. The serpent of oppression and wrong
has left it, and as America comes into her own, that paradise shall be.

The Caribs

Had it not been for the Caribs the Antilleans would have led a placid