and noses. So Columbus supposed that among the finer people he hoped
soon to meet in the southwest, he should find great quantities of the
yellow metal. He was delighted. Success, he felt, was not far off. Japan
was near, China was near, India was near. Of this he was certain; and
even until he died Columbus did not have any idea that he had found a
new world--such as America really was. He was sure that he had simply
landed upon the eastern coasts of Asia and that he had found what he set
out to discover--the nearest route to the Indies.

The next day Columbus pulled up his anchors, and having seized and
carried off to his ships some of the poor natives who had welcomed him
so gladly, he commenced a cruise among the islands of the group he had
discovered.

Day after day he sailed among these beautiful tropic islands, and of
them and of the people who lived upon them he wrote to the king and
queen of Spain: "This country excels all others as far as the day
surpasses the night in splendor. The natives love their neighbors as
themselves; their conversation is the sweetest imaginable; their faces
smiling; and so gentle and so affectionate are they, that I swear to
Your Highness there is not a better people in the world."

Does it not seem a pity that so great a man should have acted so meanly
toward these innocent people who loved and trusted him so? For it was
Columbus who first stole them away from their island homes and who first
thought of making them slaves to the white men.



CHAPTER VII. HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF.