he would impress his countrymen with favourable feelings towards the
Spaniards, but he never heard anything of him afterwards.

When he arrived on that part of the island where he had built the fort
and taken leave of his companions, the evening growing dark, the land
was hidden from their sight. Columbus watched for the dawn of day with
the greatest anxiety; when at last the approach of the morning sun
rendering the objects on shore visible, in the place where the fort had
stood, nothing was to be seen. No human being was near, neither Indian
nor European; he ordered a boat to be manned, and himself went, at the
head of a party, to explore how things really were.

The crew hastened to the place where the fortress had been erected; they
found it burnt and demolished, the palisades beaten down, and the ground
strewed with broken chests and fragments of European garments.

The natives, at their approach, did not welcome them as they expected,
like friends, but fled and concealed themselves as if afraid to be seen.

Columbus, at length, with some difficulty, by signs of peace and
friendship, persuaded a few of them to come forth to him. From them he
learned, that scarcely had he set sail for Spain, when all his counsels
and commands faded from the minds of those who remained behind. Instead
of cultivating the good-will of the natives, they endeavoured, by all
kinds of wrongful means, to get possession of their golden ornaments and
other articles of value, and seduce from them their wives and daughters,
and had also quarrelled among themselves.

The consequences of this bad conduct were what might have been expected:
some died by sickness caused by intemperance, some fell in brawls