he island and took formal possession of it,
naming it Santa Maria de la Concepcion, which is the Rum Cay of the
modern charts. As the wind chopped round and he found himself on a
lee-shore he did not stay there, but sailed again before night. Two
of the unhappy prisoners from Guanahani at this point made good their
escape by swimming to a large canoe which one of the natives of the new
island had rowed out--a circumstance which worried Columbus not a
little; since he feared it would give him a bad name with the natives.
He tried to counteract it by loading with presents another native who
came to barter balls of cotton, and sending him away again.

The effect of all that he was seeing, of the bridge of islands that
seemed to be stretching towards the south-west and leading him to the
region of untold wealth, was evidently very stimulating and exciting to
Columbus. His Journal is almost incoherent where he attempts to set down
all he has got to say. Let us listen to him for a moment:

"These islands are very green and fertile, and the breezes are very
soft, and there may be many things which I do not know, because I
did not wish to stop, in order to discover and search many islands
to find gold. And since these people make signs thus, that they
wear gold on their arms and legs,--and it is gold, because I showed
them some pieces which I have,--I cannot fail, with the aid of our
Lord, in finding it where it is native. And being in the middle of
the gulf between these two islands, that is to say, the island of
Santa Maria and this large one, which I named Fernandina, I found a
man alone in a canoe who was going from the island of Santa Maria to
Fernandina, and was carrying a little of his bread which might have
been about as large as the fist, and a gourd of water, and a piece
of reddish earth reduced to dust and afterwards kneaded, and some
dry leaves--[Tobacco]--which must be a thing very much appreciated
among them, because they had already brought me some of them as a
present at San Salvador: and he was carrying a small basket of their
kind, in which he had a string of small glass beads and two blancas,
by which I knew that he came from the island of San Salvador, and
had gone from there to Santa Maria and was going to Fernandina. He
came to the ship: I caused him to enter it, as he asked to do so,
and I had h