[Illustration:  The Morro Havana]

He began his eastward journey on November 12th.  As he did not reach Cape Maisi, the eastern point of the island, until December 5th, he must have made frequent stops to examine the shore.  Referring to one of the ports that he entered he wrote to the Spanish Sovereigns thus:  “The amenity of this river, and the clearness of the water, through which the sand at the bottom may be seen; the multitude of palm trees of various forms, the highest and most beautiful that I have met with, and an infinity of other great and green trees; the birds in rich plumage and the verdure of the fields, render this country of such marvellous beauty that it surpasses all others in charms and graces, as the day doth the night in lustre.  For which reason I often say to my people that, much as I endeavor to give a complete account of it to your majesties, my tongue cannot express the whole truth, nor my pen describe it; and I have been so overwhelmed at the sight of so much beauty that I have not known how to relate it.”

Columbus made no settlement in Cuba; his part extends only to the discovery.  On his second expedition, in the spring of 1494, he visited and explored the south coast as far west as the Isle of Pines, to which he gave the name La Evangelista.  He touched the south coast again on his fourth voyage, in 1503.  On his way eastward from his voyage of discovery on the coast of Central America, he missed his direct course to Hispaniola, and came upon the Cuban shore near Cape Cruz.  He was detained there for some days by heavy weather and adverse winds, and sailed thence to his unhappy experience in Jamaica.  The work of colonizing remained for others.  Columbus died in the belief that he had discovered a part of the continent of Asia.  That Cuba was only an island was determined by Sebastian de Ocampo who sailed around it in 1508.  Baron Humboldt, who visited Cuba in 1801 and again in 1825, and wrote learnedly about it, states that “the first settlement of the whites occurred in 1511, when Velasquez, under orders from Don Diego Columbus, landed at Puerto de las Palmas, near Cape Maisi, and subjugated the Cacique Hatuey who had fled from Haiti to the eastern end of Cuba, where he became the chief of a confederation of several smaller native princes.”  This was, in fact, a military expedition composed of three hundred soldiers, with four vessels.

Hatuey deserves attention.  His name is not infrequently seen in Cuba today, but it is probable that few visitors know whether it refers to a man, a bird, or a vegetable.  He was the first Cuban hero of whom we have record, although the entire reliability of the record is somewhat doubtful.  The notable historian of this period is Bartolome Las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa.  He appears to have been a man of great worth, a very tender heart, and an imagination fully as vivid as that of Columbus.  His sympathies were aroused by the