render a prosecution of his voyage almost impossible. He had scarcely
turned back, intending to found a settlement on the river Veragua, before
he encountered a storm which tried his worm-eaten caravels very severely.
The thunder and lightning wore incessant; the waterspouts (the first they
had seen) threatened to engulph them; huge crests of waves burst in
phosphorescent floods over them; and their escape, if we consider the
smallness of the caravels, and the force of a tropical cyclone, was little
less than miraculous. At last, after eight days' tossing to and fro, the
admiral gained the mouth of a river, which he named the Bethlehem, because
he entered it on the day of the Epiphany.


A SETTLEMENT FORMED.

In this neighbourhood there was a powerful cacique, named Quibia, whose
territory contained much gold, and with whom, therefore, the Spaniards
were anxious to treat. But he outwitted them. Offering to supply them with
guides to conduct them to his gold mines, he really sent them, not to his
own mines, but to those of a rival cacique, of Urira. Here, however, they
succeeded in acquiring, by barter and by actual discovery, large
quantities of the precious metal, which seemed to be so abundant, that the
admiral made sure that he had come to the very Aurea Chersonesus from
which Solomon had obtained the gold for the temple at Jerusalem. He had
seen more signs of gold here in two days, he said, than he had seen in St.
Domingo in four years. His first step was to form a settlement to provide
a depot for the gold which might be collected. A convenient site was found
near the mouth of the river Bethlehem, and by the end of March the
Adelantado had built a village of huts, in which it was proposed that he
should remain, with about eighty followers, while Columbus returned to
Spain for supplies.