which the Spaniards
mistook for gentleness of disposition, in other places the red men
showed fight at once, acting upon the brute impulse to drive away
strangers. In both cases, of course, dread of the unknown was the
prompting impulse, though so differently manifested. As the Spaniards
went ashore upon Jamaica, the Indians greeted them with a shower of
javelins and for a few moments stood up against the deadly fire of the
cross-bows, but when they turned to flee, a single bloodhound, let loose
upon them, scattered them in wildest panic.[563]

[Footnote 563: Bernaldez, _Reyes Catolicos_, cap. cxxv.
Domesticated dogs were found generally in aboriginal America,
but they were very paltry curs compared to these fierce hounds,
one of which could handle an unarmed man as easily as a terrier
handles a rat.]

[Sidenote: Coasting the south side of Cuba.]

Finding no evidences of civilization upon this beautiful island,
Columbus turned northward and struck the Cuban coast again at the point
which still bears the name he gave it, Cape Cruz. Between the general
contour of this end of Cuba and that of the eastern extremity of Cathay
upon the Toscanelli map there is a curious resemblance, save that the
direction is in the one case more east and west and in the other more
north and south. Columbus passed no cities like Zaiton, nor cities of
any sort, but when he struck into the smiling archipelago which he
called the Queen's Gardens, now known as Cayos de las Doce Leguas, he
felt sure that he was among Marco Polo's seven thousand spice islands.
On the 3d of June, at some point on the Cuban coast, probably near
Trinidad, the crops of several doves were opened and spices found in
them. None of the natives here had ever heard of an end to Cuba, and
they believed it was endless.[564] The next country to the west of
themselves was named Mangon, and it was inhabited by people with tails
which they carefully hid by wearing loose robes of cloth. This
information seemed decisive to Columbus. Evidently this Mangon was
Mangi, the province in which was the city of Zaiton, the province just
south of Cathay. And as for the tailed men, the book of Mandeville had a
story of some naked savages in eastern Asia who spoke of their more
civilized neighbours as wearing clothes in order to cover up some bodily
peculiarity or defect. Could there be any doubt that the Spanish
caravels had come at length to the