pices? Answer, as usual:
"No, but they thought there was a great deal of it to the south-east."
The interest of the visitors then evaporated, and they set out for the
coast again; but they found that at least five hundred men and women
wanted to come with them, since they believed that they were returning to
heaven. On their journey back the two Spaniards noticed many people
smoking, as the Admiral himself had done a few days before; and this is
the first known discovery of tobacco by Europeans.

They saw a great many geese, and the strange dogs that did not bark, and
they saw potatoes also, although they did not know what they were.
Columbus, having heard this report, and contemplating these gentle
amiable creatures, so willing to give all they had in return for a scrap
of rubbish, feels his heart lifted in a pious aspiration that they might
know the benefits of the Christian religion. "I have to say, Most Serene
Princes," he writes,

"that by means of devout religious persons knowing their language
well, all would soon become Christians: and thus I hope in our Lord
that Your Highnesses will appoint such persons with great diligence
in order to turn to the Church such great peoples, and that they
will convert them, even as they have destroyed those who would not
confess the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit: and after their
days, as we are all mortal, they will leave their realms--in a very
tranquil condition and freed from heresy and wickedness, and will be
well received before the Eternal Creator, Whom may it please to give
them a long life and a great increase of larger realms and
dominions, and the will and disposition to spread the holy Christian
religion, as they have done up to the present time, Amen. To-day I
will launch the ship and make haste to start on Thursday, in the
name of God, to go to the southeast and seek gold and spices, and
discover land."
Thus Christopher Columbus, in the Name of God,

November 11, 1492.

CHAPTER II

THE EARTHLY PARADISE

When Columbus weighed anchor on the 12th of November he took with him six
captive Indians. It was his intention to go in search of the island of
Babeque, which the Indians alleged lay about thirty leagues to the
east-south-east, and where, they said, the people gathered gold out of the
sand with candles at night, and afterwards made bars of