And when the naked and astonished people of the island saw all this--the
canoes with wings, as they called the ships, the richly-dressed men with
white and bearded faces, the flags and swords, and the people kneeling
about this grand-looking old man in the crimson cloak--they said to one
another: These men are gods; they have come from Heaven to see us. And
then, they, too, fell on the ground and worshiped these men from Heaven,
as they supposed Columbus and his sailors to be.

And when they found that the men from Heaven did not offer to hurt them,
they came nearer; and the man in the crimson cloak gave them beads and
pieces of bright cloth and other beautiful things they had never seen
before. And this made them feel all the more certain that these men
who had come to see them in the canoes with wings must really be from
Heaven. So they brought them fruits and flowers and feathers and birds
as presents; and both parties, the men with clothes and the men without
clothes, got on very well together.

But Columbus, as we know, had come across the water for one especial
reason. He was to find Cathay, and he was to find it so that he could
carry back to Spain the gold and jewels and spices of Cathay. The first
thing, therefore, that he tried to find out from the people of the
island--whom he called "Indians," because he thought he had come to a
part of the coast of India was where Cathay might be.

Of course they did not understand him. Even Louis, the interpreter, who
knew a dozen languages and who tried them all, could not make out what
these "Indians" said. But from their signs and actions and from the
sound of the words they spoke, Columbus understood that Cathay was off
somewhere to the southwest, and that the gold he was bound to find came
from there. The "Indians" had little bits of gold hanging in their ears