perishable. They had no art, save in pottery, and that was not highly
developed. They had no literature. The result was that when they
perished through unfavorable contact with a more powerful and aggressive
race they left scarcely a trace of themselves behind, save in the
records and testimony of their conquerors and destroyers. Some specimens
of their pottery have been preserved: the words "hammock" and "canoe"
come to us from them; and the use of tobacco is their universal
memorial.

Such were the aborigines, if not the absolute autochthones, of Cuba.
Their only history lives in the brief and scanty records of them made by
their destroyers. They left no enduring impress upon the island, save
its name. How many they were is unknown, and estimates which are mere
guesses differ widely. In a single generation they disappeared, partly
through slaughter and partly through such diseases as small pox and
measles, which were introduced to the island--of course, not
intentionally--by the Spaniards, and which the natives were unable to
resist. The only significant history of Cuba begins, therefore, with the
landfall of Christopher Columbus upon its shores.

CHAPTER II

Sunday, October 28, 1492, was the natal day of Cuba; the day of its
advent into the ken of the civilized world. At the island which he
called Isabella--either Long Island or Crooked Island--Columbus had
heard of a very great land which the natives called Cuba, and which, the
wish being father to the thought, he instantly identified with Cipango.
Toward it, therefore, his course had thereafter been directed. Progress
was slow, because of contrary winds and calms, and there were numerous
small islands along the way to engage at least passing attention.
Particularly was there a group of seven or eight, lying in a row
extending north and south, which he called the Islas de Arena, and which
we may confidently identify with the Mucaras. Early on the morning of
Saturday, October 27, he had left the last of the Sandy Isles behind,
and from a point considerably to the eastward of them, probably near
what is now known as Rocky Heads, he had set his course a little west of
south for the shore of Cuba. Thus he had passed across the southeastern
end of the Great Bahama Bank, since most appropriately called the
Columbus Bank, until just at nightfall he had seen looming before him on
the southern horizon the mountainous form of a vast land. It was too
late, however,