CHAPTER X.

BUILDING OF THE FORTRESS OF LA NAVIDAD.

[1492.]

HE solicitude expressed by many of his people to be left

THE

behind, added to the friendly and pacific character of the natives, now suggested to Columbus the idea of forming the germ of a future colony. The wreck of the caravel would afford materials to construct a fortress, which might be defended by her guns, and supplied with her ammunition; and he could spare provisions enough to maintain a small garrison for a year. The people who thus remained on the island could explore it, and make themselves acquainted with its mines, and other sources of wealth; they might, at the same time, procure by traffic a large quantity of gold from the natives; they could learn their language, and accustom them selves to their habits and manners, so as to be of great use in future intercourse. In the mean time, the admiral could return to Spain, report the success of his enterprise, and bring out reinforcements.

No sooner did this idea break upon the mind of Columbus, than he set about accomplishing it with his accustomed

promptness and celerity. The wreck was broken up and brought peacemeal to shore; and a site chosen, and preparations made for the erection of a tower. When Guacanagari was informed of the intention of the admiral to leave a part of his men for the defence of the island from the Caribs, while he returned to his country for more, he was greatly overjoyed. His subjects manifested equal delight at the idea of retaining these wonderful people among them, and at the prospect of the future arrival of the admiral, with ships freighted with hawks' bells, and other precious articles. They eagerly lent their assistance in building the fortress; little dreaming that they were assisting to place on their necks the galling yoke of perpetual and toilsome slavery.

The preparations for the fortress were scarcely commenced, when certain Indians, arriving at the harbor, brought a report that a great vessel, like those of the admiral, had anchored in a river at the eastern end of the island. These tidings, for a time, dispelled a thousand uneasy conjectures which had harassed the mind of Columbus, for of course this vessel could be no other than the Pinta. He immediately procured a canoe from Guacanagari, with several Indians to navigate it, and dispatched a Spaniard with a letter to Pinzon, couched in amicable terms, making no complaints of his desertion, but urging him to join company immediately.

After three days' absence the canoe returned. The Spaniard reported that he had pursued the coast for twenty leagues, but had neither seen nor heard any thing of the Pinta; he considered the report, therefore, as incorrect. Other rumors, however, were immediately afterwards circulated at the harbor, of this large vessel to the eastward; but, on investigation.

they appeared to Columbus to be equally undeserving of credit. He relapsed, therefore, into his doubts and anxieties in respect to Pinzon. Since the shipwreck of his vessel, the desertion of that commander had become a matter of still more serious moment, and had obliged him to alter all his plans. Should the Pinta be lost, as was very possible in a voyage of such extent, and exposed to so many uncommon perils, there would then be but one ship surviving, of the three which had set sail from Palos, and that one an indifferent sailer. On the precarious return of that crazy bark, across an immense expanse of ocean, would depend the ultimate success of the expedition. Should that one likewise perish, every record of this great discovery would be swallowed up with it; the name of Columbus would only be remembered as that of a mad adventurer, who, despising the opinions of the learned and the counsels of the wise, had departed into the wilds of the ocean never to return; the obscurity of his fate, and its imagined horrors, might deter all future enterprise, and thus the new world might remain, as heretofore, unknown to civilized man. These considerations determined Columbus to abandon all further prosecution of his voyage; to leave unexplored the magnificent regions which were inviting him on every hand; to give up all hope for the present of finding his way to the dominions of the Grand Khan, and to lose no time in returning to Spain and reporting his discovery.

While the fortress was building, he continued to receive every day new proofs of the amity and kindness of Guacanagari. Whenever he went on shore to superintend the works, he was entertained in the most hospitable manner by that chieftain. He had the largest house in the place prepared

for his reception, strewed or carpeted with palm-leaves, and furnished with low stools of a black and shining wood that looked like jet. When he received the admiral, it was always in a style of princely generosity, hanging round his neck some jewel of gold, or making him some present of similar value.

On one occasion, he came to meet him on his landing, attended by five tributary caciques, each carrying a coronet of gold; they conducted him with great deference to the house already mentioned, where, seating him in one of the chairs, Guacanagari took off his own coronet of gold and placed it upon his head: Columbus in return took from his neck a collar of fine-colored beads, which he put round that of the cacique; he invested him with his own mantle of fine cloth, gave him a pair of colored boots, and put on his finger a large silver ring, upon which metal the Indians set a great value, it not being found in their island.

The cacique exerted himself to the utmost to procure a great quantity of gold for the admiral before his departure for Spain. The supplies thus furnished, and the vague accounts collected through the medium of signs and imperfect interpretations, gave Columbus magnificent ideas of the wealth in the interior of this island. The names of caciques, mountains, and provinces, were confused together in his imagination, and supposed to mean various places where great treasure was to be found; above all, the name of Cibao continually occurred, the golden region among the mountains, whence the natives procured most of the ore for their ornaments. In the pimento or red pepper which abounded in the island, he fancied he found a trace of oriental spices, and he thought he had met with specimens of rhubarb.

Passing, with his usual excitability, from a state of doubt and anxiety to one of sanguine anticipation, he now considered his shipwreck as a providential event mysteriously ordained by heaven to work out the success of his enterprise. Without this seeming disaster, he should never have remained to find out the secret wealth of the island, but should merely have touched at various parts of the coast, and passed on. As a proof that the particular hand of Providence was exerted in it, he cites the circumstance of his having been wrecked in a perfect calm, without wind or wave; and the desertion of the pilot and mariners, when sent to carry out an anchor astern; for, had they performed his orders, the vessel would have been hauled off, they would have pursued their voyage, and the treasures of the island would have remained a secret. But now he looked forward to glorious fruits to be reaped from this seeming evil; "for he hoped," he said, "that when he returned from Spain, he should find a ton of gold collected in traffic by those whom he had left behind, and mines and spices discovered in such quantities, that the sovereigns before three years, would be able to undertake a crusade for the deliverance of the holy sepulchre ;" the grand object to which he had proposed that they should dedicate the fruits of this enterprise.

Such was the visionary, yet generous, enthusiasm of Columbus, the moment that prospects of vast wealth broke upon his mind. What in some spirits would have awakened a grasping and sordid avidity to accumulate, immediately filled his imagination with plans of magnificent expenditure. But how vain are our attempts to interpret the inscrutable decrees of Providence! The shipwreck, which Columbus considered