He marked out a central spot for his park or square; around this ran a street, and along this street he built large stone buildings for a storehouse, a church and a house for himself, as governor of the colony.  On the side streets were built the houses for the people who were to live in the new town, while on a rocky point with its queer little round tower looking out to sea stood the stone fort to protect the little city.  It was the first settlement made by white men in all the great new world of America.

You must know that there are some very wise and very bright people who do not agree to this.  They say that nearly five hundred years before Columbus landed, a Norwegian prince or viking, whose name was Leif Ericsson, had built on the banks of the beautiful Charles River, some twelve miles from Boston, a city which he called Norumbega.

But this has not really been proved.  It is almost all the fancy of a wise man who has studied it out for himself, and says he believes there was such a city.  But he does not really know it as we know of the city of Isabella, and so we must still say that Christopher Columbus really discovered America and built the first fort and the first city on its shores—­although he thought he was doing all this in Asia, on the shores of China or Japan.

When Columbus had his people nearly settled in their new city of Isabella, he remembered that the main thing he was sent to do was to get together as much gold as possible.  His men were already grumbling.  They had come over the sea, they said, not to dig cellars and build huts, but to find gold—­gold that should make them rich and great and happy.

So Columbus set to work gold-hunting.  At first things seemed to promise success.  The Indians told big stories of gold to be found in the mountains of Hayti; the men sent to the mountains discovered signs of gold, and at once Columbus sent home joyful tidings to the king and queen of Spain.

Then he and his men hunted everywhere for the glittering yellow metal.  They fished for it in the streams; they dug for it in the earth; they drove the Indians to hunt for it also until the poor redmen learned to hate the very sound of the word gold, and believed that this was all the white men lived for, cared for or worked for; holding up a piece of this hated gold the Indians would say, one to another:  “Behold the Christian’s god!” And so it came about that the poor worried natives, who were not used to such hard work, took the easiest way out of it all, and told the Spaniards the biggest kind of lies as to where gold might be found—­always away off somewhere else—­if only the white men would go there to look for it.