that there was no difficulty
about his getting water and supplies. While the barrels of water were
being filled he landed and strolled about in the pleasant groves,
observing the islanders and their customs, and finding them on the whole
a little more sophisticated than those of San Salvador. The women wore
mantillas on their heads and "little pieces of cotton" round their
loins-a sufficiently odd costume; and they appeared to Columbus to be a
little more astute than the other islanders, for though they brought
cotton in quantities to the ships they exacted payment of beads for it.
In the charm and wonder of his walk in this enchanted land he was able
for a moment to forget his hunger for gold and to admire the great
branching palm-trees, and the fish that

"are here so different from ours that it is wonderful. There are
some formed like cocks of the finest colours in the world, blue,
yellow, red and of all colours, and others tinted in a thousand
manners: and the colours are so fine, that there is not a man who
does not wonder at them, and who does not take great pleasure in
seeing them. Also, there are whales. I saw no beasts on land of
any kind except parrots and lizards. A boy told me that he saw a
large snake. I did not see sheep nor goats, nor any other beast;
although I have been here a very short time, as it is midday, still
if there had been any, I could not have missed seeing some."

Columbus was not a very good descriptive writer, and he has but two
methods of comparison; either a thing is like Spain, or it is not like
Spain. The verdure was "in such condition as it is in the month of May
in Andalusia; and the trees were all as different from ours as day from
night, and also the fruits and grasses and the stones and all the
things." The essay written by a cockney child after a day at the seaside
or in the country, is not greatly different from some of the verbatim
passages of this journal; and there is a charm in that fact too, for it
gives us a picture of Columbus, in spite of his hunt for gold and
precious stones, wandering, still a child at heart, in the wonders of the
enchanted world to which he had come.

There was trouble on this day, because some of the crew had found an
Indian with a piece of gold in his nose, and they got a scolding from
Columbus for not detaining him and bartering with him for it. There was
bad weather also, with heavy r