CHAPTER XV

ON A SEA OF TROUBLES


In the new colony of Isabella things went badly from the very start. Its
governor comforted himself by thinking that he could still put himself
right with everybody by pushing farther west and discovering whether the
Asiatic mainland--which Martin Alonzo Pinzon had always insisted lay
back of the islands--was really there. Accordingly, Columbus took a crew
of men and departed April 24, 1494, leaving his brother Diego in command
of the colony. Never had Columbus done a more unwise thing than to leave
Isabella at that moment. Not one single lesson of self-help and
cooperation had his men yet learned; and of course they reproached him
with their troubles. The root of it all was disappointment. They had
come for wealth and ease, and had found poverty and hardship. They even
threatened to seize the ships in the harbor and sail off, leaving the
two brothers alone on the island; yet, knowing all this, Columbus
decided to go off and continue his discoveries!

Again he just escaped finding the mainland. On sailing west from
Isabella and reaching Cuba at the nearest point to Haiti, he decided to
coast along its southern shore. He had gone along its northern shore on
his first voyage, and had turned back instead of continuing toward the
continent. This time he took the southern coast, pushing west for about
a month and a half, and again turning back when he was not more than two
hundred miles from Central America. The natives whom he questioned told