expedition to Guinea; had he not seen the Portuguese commander exchange
ounces of bright beads for pounds of ivory and gold?

And so he, Christopher Columbus, came prepared for similar trade in his
western lands; the world, we see, was hunting for bargains, trying to
get much for little in the fifteenth century, just as it still is in the
twentieth! Then again, look at the Admiral's innocent remark, "I think
they would make excellent servants." That is still the rule to-day; the
trained man sees in the untrained only a servant. It was perfectly
natural that the Spanish eye should instantly see that little island
converted into a Spanish plantation with those simple, gentle creatures
who "learn easily" working it. And lastly, let us look into this
sentence: "I intend taking some of them home to show your Majesties." It
never occurred to the Admiral to add, "if they are willing to come with
me." Indeed, it seldom occurred to any Christian of Christopher
Columbus's day that a non-Christian, and especially a savage one, had
the same human instincts as a Christian, and that he would have
preferred staying in his own land and with his own family. Out of that
horrible but common mistake grew up the whole miserable business of
kidnapping, buying, and selling human beings. Let us not be too greatly
shocked at our fifteenth-century hero for talking so unfeelingly.
Remember, it was only about fifty years ago that we saw the last of
slavery in these United States, and even then it died hard. Christopher
was, on most moral questions, merely a man of his time, a fact to be
kept in mind as we read of his later voyages.

"They answered me by signs," wrote Columbus. In other words, the
linguist of the expedition, the man learned in Asiatic tongues, had not
been able to make himself understood on San Salvador; and neither was he
when they sailed on among the other islands. Clearly, these little