that any might love.

Time lacks to say all that we did and heard and guessed this day upon
this island! It was first love after long weeks at sea, and our cramped
ships and all our great uncertainty! If it was not what we had expected,
still here it was, tangible land that never had been known, wonderful
to us, giving us already rich narrative for Palos and Huelva and
Fishertown, for Cordova and the Queen and King. We were sure now that
other land was to be met, so soon as we sailed a reasonable distance to
meet it. Under the horizon would be land surely, and surely of an import
that this small island lacked, like Paradise though it seemed to us
this day! Any who looked at the Admiral saw that he would make no long
tarrying here. He named this island San Salvador, but we would not wait
in San Salvador.

This day in shifts, all our men were brought ashore, each division
having three hours of blessed land. So good was earth under foot, so
good were trees, so delectable the fruit, so lovely to move and run and
watch every moving, running, walking thing! And these good, red-brown
folk, naked it was true, but mannerly after their own fashion, who
thought every seaman a god, and the ship boys sons of gods! And we also
were good and mannerly, the _Santa Maria_, the Pinta and the Nina. I
look back and I see a strange, a boyish and a happy day.

The sun was westering. We felt the exhaustion of a long holiday with
novelties so many that at last the senses did not answer. Perhaps the
Indians felt it too. Often and often have I seen great wisdom guide the
Admiral. An hour before approaching night might have said "Go!" he took
us one and all back to the ships. "_Salve Regina_" was a sound that
evening to hear, and afterwards it was to sleep, sleep,--tired as from
the Fair at Seville!

CHAPTER XVI

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. They called them "canoes", made
them, large and small, out of trunks of trees, hollowed by fire, and
with their stone knives. We had seen one copper knife. Asked about that,
they pointed to the south and seemed to say that yonder dwelled men who
had all they wished of most things.

From dark the east grew pale, from pallor put on roses. This day no
mariner grumbled at the call to awake. Here still lay our Fortunate
Isle, our San Salvador; here our ivor