great island to the southeast, abounding
in gold, and so he turned his prows in that direction. On the 20th of
November he was deserted by Martin Pinzon, whose ship could always
outsail the others. It seems to have been Pinzon's design to get home in
advance with such a story as would enable him to claim for himself an
undue share of credit for the discovery of the Indies. This was the
earliest instance of a kind of treachery such as too often marred the
story of Spanish exploration and conquest in the New World.

[Sidenote: Columbus arrives at Hayti and thinks it must be Japan.]

[Sidenote: Wreck of the Santa Maria, Dec. 25, 1492.]

For a fortnight after Pinzon's desertion Columbus crept slowly eastward
along the coast of Cuba, now and then landing to examine the country and
its products; and it seemed to him that besides pearls and mastic and
aloes he found in the rivers indications of gold. When he reached the
cape at the end of the island he named it Alpha and Omega, as being the
extremity of Asia,--Omega from the Portuguese point of view, Alpha from
his own. On the 6th of December he landed upon the northwestern coast of
the island of Hayti, which he called Espanola, Hispaniola, or "Spanish
land."[521] Here, as the natives seemed to tell him of a region to the
southward and quite inland which abounded in gold, and which they called
Cibao, the Admiral at once caught upon the apparent similarity of sounds
and fancied that Cibao must be Cipango, and that at length he had
arrived upon that island of marvels. It was much nearer the Asiatic
mainland (i. e. Cuba) than he had supposed, but then, it was beginning
to appear that in any case somebody's geography must be wrong. Columbus
was enchanted with the scenery. "The land is elevated," he says, "with
many mountains and peaks ... most beautiful, of a thousand varied forms,
accessible, and full of trees of endless varieties, so tall that they
seem to touch the sky; and I have been told that they never lose their
foliage. The nightingale [i. e. some kind of thrush] and other small
birds of a thousand kinds were singing in the month of November
[December] when I was there."[522] Before he had done much toward
exploring this paradise, a sudden and grave mishap quite altered his
plans. On Christmas morning, between midnight and dawn, owing to
careless disobedience of orders on the part of the helmsman, the
flag-ship struck upon a sand-bank near the present site of Port au Pai