canoes. No persons were to be found upon the premises,
and the only living things were "a kind of dog that never barks," which
we may assume to have been some small animal of the ant bear tribe, now
probably extinct or at any rate no longer domesticated. The houses were
notably neat and clean, and were evidently the abode of fishermen, since
in them were nets and cordage of palm fibre, fish-hooks of horn, and
harpoons of bone. All about the houses the herbage was as profuse, at
the end of October, as it was in Andalusia in May. Most of the herbs as
well as the trees were strange to Columbus, but he found some wild
amaranth, and much common purslane. He went some distance up the harbor,
or river as he called it, at every step or stroke of the oars seeing
something new to excite his admiration.

The natives of Guanahani whom he had brought on his ship informed him
that Cuba was a very large island, which could not be circumnavigated in
twenty days; that it contained ten large rivers and that its whole
expanse was well watered. They were also understood by Columbus to say
that gold mines and pearls were to be found in the island, and that
large ships came thither from the mainland domains of the Grand Khan,
ten days' sail away. The bulk of this "information" was of course quite
mistaken by Columbus, his vivid imagination and his eager desires easily
misleading him into interpreting anything which the natives might say,
largely in sign language, as meaning just what he wished to be true.

The next day Columbus left San Salvador and sailed westward along the
coast. That was the direction in which, according to the natives of
Guanahani, the mainland and the capital of the King or the Grand Khan
were to be found. That, too, was the direction in which Mangi and Cathay
were to be found according to the map of Toscanelli, assuming Cuba to be
Cipango: which Columbus at this stage of his enterprise confidently
believed. Of the researches of the great voyager along the Cuban coast
we have a detailed account in his journal. Unfortunately, there is no
certain means of identifying the points at which he landed. They are
described as being so many leagues from his starting point, San
Salvador; wherefore it is obvious that all depends upon the identity of
the latter. Yet it seems to me that his account of his coastwise
explorations strongly confirms the theory that his San Salvador was Port
Naranjo and not Nuevitas. For we are told that