as obedient in this as I have been to all his other orders;
nothing but his command shall release me. If twelve years' hardship and
fatigue; if continual dangers and frequent famine; if the ocean first
opened, and five times passed and repassed, to add a new world,
abounding with wealth, to the Spanish monarchy; and if an infirm and
premature old age, brought on by these services, deserve these chains as
a reward, it is very fit I should wear them to Spain, and keep them by
me as memorials to the end of my life._

From a letter to the King and Queen:

_This country (the Bahamas) excels all others as far as the day
surpasses the night in splendor; the natives love their neighbors as
themselves; their conversation is the sweetest imaginable, and their
faces are always smiling. So gentle and so affectionate are they that I
swear to your Highness there is no better people in the world._

From the same:

_The fish rival the birds in tropical brilliancy of color, the scales of
some of them glancing back the rays of light like precious stones, as
they sported about the ships and flashed gleams of gold and silver
through the clear water._

Speech of a West Indian chief to Columbus, on his arrival in Cuba:

_Whether you are divinities or mortal men, we know not. You have come
into these countries with a force, against which, were we inclined to
resist, it would be folly. We are all therefore at your mercy; but if
you are men, subject to mortality like ourselves, you can not be
unapprised that after this life there is another, wherein a very
different portion is allotted to good and bad men. If therefore you
expect to die, and believe, with us, that every one is to be rewarded in
a future state according to his conduct in the present, you will do no
hurt to those who do none to you._

SHIPWRECK AND MARRIAGE.

From the "Life of Columbus," by his son Hernando:

_I say, that whilst the Admiral sailed with the aforesaid "Columbus the
Younger," which was a long time, it fell out that, understanding the
before-mentioned four great Venetian galleys were coming from Flanders,
they went out to seek, and found them beyond Lisbon, about Cape St.
Vincent, which is in Portugal, where, falling to blows, they fought
furiously and grappled, beating one another from vessel to vessel with
the utmost rage, making use not only of their weapons but artificial
fireworks; so that after they had fought from morning until evening, and
abund