This neighborhood, La Navidad and the shipwreck of
the Santa Maria, burned Guarico and now this
empty village, perpetual reminder that in some part
our Indian subjects liked us not so well as formerly
and could not be made Christian with a breath, grew
no longer to our choice. Something of melancholy
overhung for the Admiral this part of Hispaniola.
He was seeking a site for a city, but now he liked
it not here. The seventeen ships put on sail and,
a stately flight of birds greater than herons, pursued
their way, easterly now, along the coast of Hispaniola.
Between thirty and forty leagues from the ruin of
La Navidad opened to us a fair, large harbor where
two rivers entered the sea. There was a great
forest and bright protruding rock, and across the
south the mountains. When we landed and explored
we found a small Indian village that had only vaguely
heard that gods had descended. Forty leagues
across these forests is a long way. They had heard
a rumor that the cacique of Guarico liked the mighty
strangers and Caonabo liked them not, but as yet knew
little more. The harbor, the land, the two rivers
pleased us. “Here we will build,”
quoth the Viceroy, “a city named Isabella.”
CHAPTER XXIX
CHRISTMASTIDE, a year from the sinking of the Santa
Maria, came to nigh two thousand Christian men
dwelling in some manner of houses by a river in a
land that, so short time before, had never heard the
word “Christmas.” Now, in Spain and
elsewhere, men and women, hearing Christmas bells,
might wonder, “What are they doing—are
they also going to mass—those adventurers
across the Sea of Darkness? Have they converted
the Indies? Are they moving happily in the golden,
spicy lands? Great marvel! Christ now is
born there as here!”
Juan Lepe chanced to be walking in the cool of the
evening with Don Francisco de Las Casas, a sensible,
strong man, not unread in the philosophers. He
spoke to me of his son, a young man whom he loved,
who would sooner or later come out to him to Hispaniola,
if he, the elder, stayed here. So soon as this
we had begun to speak thus, “Come out to Hispaniola.”
“Come out to Isabella in Hispaniola.”
What a strong wind is life, leaping from continent
to continent and crying, “Home wherever I can
breathe and move!” This young man was Bartolome,
then at Salamanca, at the University. Bartolome
de Las Casas, whom Juan Lepe should live to know and
work with. But this evening I heard the father
talk, as any father of any promising son.
With us, too, was Don Juan Ponce de Leon, who had
a story out of Mandeville of a well by the city of
Polombe in Prester John’s country. If you
drank of the well, though you were dying you would
never more have sickness, and though you were white-bearded
you would come young again!
The palms waved above Isabella that was building behind
the camp by the river. It was beginning, it was
planned out; the stone church, the stone house of
the Viceroy were already breast-high. A Spanish
city building, and the bells of Europe ringing.
