"The Ceboynas," says a recent writer on these Indians, "gave us the hammock, and this one Lucayan word is their only monument," for a population larger than inhabits these islands to-day were in twelve years swept from the surface of the earth by a system devised by Columbus.
Canoes.
The Admiral also describes their canoes, made in a wonderful manner of a single tree-trunk, and large enough to hold forty or forty-five men, though some were so small as to carry a single person only. Their oars are shaped like the wooden shovels with which bakers slip their loaves into ovens. If a canoe upsets, it is righted as they swim.
Gold among them.
Columbus was attracted by bits of gold dangling at the nose of some among them. By signs he soon learned that a greater abundance of this metal could be found on an island to the south; but they seemed unable to direct him with any precision how to reach that island, or at least it was not easy so to interpret any of their signs. "Poor wretches!" exclaims Helps, "if they had possessed the slightest gift of prophecy, they would have thrown these baubles into the deepest sea."
Columbus traffics with them.
They pointed in all directions, but towards the east as the way to other lands; and implied that those enemies who came from the northwest often passed to the south after gold. He found that broken dishes and bits of glass served as well for traffic with them as more valuable articles, and balls of threads of cotton, grown on the island, seemed their most merchantable commodity.
1492. October 14, sails towards Cipango.
With this rude foretaste, Columbus determined to push on for the richer Cipango. On the next day he coasted along the island in his boats, discovering two or three villages, where the inhabitants were friendly. They seemed to think that the strangers had come from heaven,—at least Columbus so interpreted their prostrations and uplifted hands. Columbus, fearful of the reefs parallel to the shore, kept outside of them, and as he moved along, saw a point of land which a ditch might convert into an island. He thought this would afford a good site for a fort, if there was need of one.