ese were
the links in the chain of hope that bound him to his pious idea. He had
seen the same thing done by the Portuguese on the Guinea coast, and it
never occurred to him that there was anything the matter with it. On the
contrary, at this time his idea was only to take slaves from among the
Caribs and man-eating islanders as a punishment for their misdeeds; but
this, like his other fine ideas, soon had to give way before the tide of
greed and conquest.

The Admiral was now anxious to get back to La Navidad, and discover the
condition of the colony which he had left behind him there. He therefore
sailed from Guadaloupe on November 20th and steered to the north-west.
His captive islanders told him that the mainland lay to the south; and if
he had listened to them and sailed south he would have probably landed on
the coast of South America in a fortnight. He shaped his course instead
to the north-west, passing many islands, but not pausing until the 14th,
when he reached the island named by him Santa Cruz. He found more Caribs
here, and his men had a brush with them, one of the crew being wounded by
a poisoned arrow of which he died in a few days. The Carib Chiefs were
captured and put in irons. They sailed again and passed a group of
islets which Columbus named after Saint Ursula and the Eleven Thousand
Virgins; discovered Porto Rico also, in one of the beautiful harbours of
which they anchored and stayed for two days. Sailing now to the west
they made land again on the 22nd of November; and coasting along it they
soon sighted the mountain of Monte Christi, and Columbus recognised that
he was on the north coast of Espanola.

CHAPTER VII

THE EARTHLY PARADISE REVISITED

On the 25th November 1493, Columbus once more dropped his anchor in the
harbour of Monte Christi, and a party was sent ashore to prospect for a
site suitable for the new town which he intended to build, for he was not
satisfied with the situation of La Navidad. There was a large river
close by; and while the party was surveying the land they came suddenly
upon two dead bodies lying by the river-side, one with a rope round its
neck and the other with a rope round its feet. The bodies were too much
decomposed to be recognisable; nevertheless to the party rambling about
in the sunshine and stillness of that green place the discovery was a
very gruesome one. They may have thought much, but they said little.
They returned to the ship, an