filling of their casks, while some of the archers strayed into the
forest in quest of game. One of the latter presently returned in haste
and fear, crying for help. He reported that he had seen in a forest
glade three men of white complexion, clad in long white tunics, leading
a company of about thirty more, armed with clubs and spears. They did
not attack him, but one of them advanced alone as if to speak with him;
whereupon he fled. At this report all his companions joined him in
hastening back to the ships for safety.

When Columbus heard these things he was much pleased. He saw in them
confirmation of what he had been told about the Province of Mangon, with
its men who had tails and who wore long robes to hide them. He at once
sent a strongly armed party inland to seek these men and parley with
them; directing them to go as much as forty miles inland, if necessary,
to find them, and to find the populous cities which he confidently
believed to exist in that region. These explorers readily enough
traversed the open palm forest which bordered the coast. But then they
came to extensive open upland plains or savannahs, with few trees but
with rank grass and other herbage as high as their heads and so dense as
to be almost impenetrable. No roads or paths were to be found, and it
was necessary to cut a trail through the herbage. For a mile they
struggled on, and then gave up the attempt and returned to the ships.
The next day another party was sent in another direction, with no better
results. Its members found fine open forests, abounding with grapevines
laden with fruit, and they saw flocks of cranes which they described as
twice the size of those of Europe. But they also saw on the ground the
footprints, as they supposed, of lions and of griffins, which so alarmed
them that they beat a hasty retreat.

Lions, and indeed all large beasts of prey, were never known to exist in
Cuba, and the griffin was of course never anything but imaginary--unless
a tradition of some prehistoric monster, ages ago extinct. But huge
alligators or caymans abounded in Cuban waters, and the footprints which
frightened Columbus's explorers were doubtless made by them. The
observation of large cranes suggests, also, an explanation of the
panic-stricken archer's story of men clothed in white robes. A flock of
those huge birds, standing erect and in line, with their leader advanced
before them, as is their custom, in the semi-gloom of a strange for