e
inhabitants, setting fire to it and to the houses round about. As their
flimsy huts burst into flames the surprised Spaniards rushed out, only to
be fallen upon by the infuriated blacks. Eight of the Spaniards rushed
naked into the sea and were drowned; the rest were butchered.
Guacanagari manfully came to their assistance and with his own followers
fought throughout the night; but his were a gentle and unwarlike people,
and they were easily routed. The King himself was badly wounded in the
thigh, but Caonabo's principal object seems to have been the destruction
of the Spaniards, and when that was completed he and his warriors, laden
with the spoils, retired.

Thus Columbus, walking on the shore with his native interpreter, or
sitting in his cabin listening with knitted brow to the accounts of the
islanders, learns of the complete and utter failure of his first hopes.
It has come to this. These are the real first-fruits of his glorious
conquest and discovery. The New World has served but as a virgin field
for the Old Adam. He who had sought to bring light and life to these
happy islanders had brought darkness and death; they had innocently
clasped the sword he had extended to them and cut themselves. The
Christian occupation of the New World had opened with vice, cruelty, and
destruction; the veil of innocence had been rent in twain, and could
never be mended or joined again. And the Earthly Paradise in which life
had gone so happily, of which sun and shower had been the true rulers,
and the green sprouting harvests the only riches, had been turned into a
shambles by the introduction of human rule and civilised standards of
wealth. Gold first and then women, things beautiful and innocent in the
happy native condition of the islands, had been the means of the
disintegration and death of this first colony. These are serious
considerations for any coloniser; solemn considerations for a discoverer
who is only on the verge and beginning of his empire-making; mournful
considerations for Christopher as he surveys the blackened ruins of the
fort, or stands bare-headed by the grass-covered graves.

There seemed to be a certain hesitancy on the part of Guacanagari to
present himself; for though he kept announcing his intention of coming to
visit the Admiral he did not come. A couple of days after the discovery
of the remains, however, he sent a message to Columbus begging him to
come and see him, which the Admiral a