The river was so wide and deep that the men could not ford it, so they made rafts to take over everything but the horses. These swam the current. Then the force passed on, but was confronted at last by the rugged slopes of the Cibao mountains. The soldiers clambered up the defile painfully and slowly. The pioneers had done what they could to smooth the way, but the ascent was wearying. They could occasionally turn from their toil to look back over this luxuriant valley which they were leaving, and lose their vision in its vast extent. Las Casas describes it as eighty leagues one way, and twenty or thirty the other.
Fort St. Thomas.
It was a scene of bewildering beauty that they left behind; it was one of sterile heights, scraggy pines, and rocky precipices which they entered. The leaders computed that they were eighteen leagues from Isabella, and as Columbus thought he saw signs of gold, amber, lapis lazuli, copper, and one knows not what else of wealth, all about him, he was content to establish his fortified position hereabouts, without pushing farther. He looked around, and found at the foot of one of the declivities of the interior of this mountainous region a fertile plain, with a running river, gurgling over beds of jasper and marble, and in the midst of it a little eminence, which he could easily fortify, as the river nearly surrounded it like a natural ditch. Here he built his fort. Recent travelers say that an overgrowth of trees now covers traces of its foundations. The fortress was, as he believed, so near the gold that one could see it with his eyes and touch it with his hands, and so, as Las Casas tells us, he named it St. Thomas.
The Indians had already learned to recognize the Christian's god. They found the golden deity in bits in the streams. They took the idol tenderly to his militant people. For their part, the poor natives much preferred rings and hawks' bells, and so a basis of traffic was easily found. In this way Columbus got some gold, but he more readily got stories of other spots, whither the natives pointed vaguely, where nuggets, which would dwarf all these bits, could be found. Columbus began to wonder why he never reached the best places.
Country examined.
Columbus returns to Isabella.
The Spaniards soon got to know the region better. Juan de Luxan, who had been sent out with a party to see what he could find, reported that the region was mountainous and in its upper parts sterile, to be sure, but that there were delicious valleys, and plenty of land to cultivate, and pasturing enough for herds. When he came back with these reports, the men put a good deal of heart in the work which they were bestowing on the citadel of St. Thomas, so that it was soon done. Pedro Margarite was placed in command with fifty-six men, and then Columbus started to return to Isabella.
Natives of the valley.
When the Admiral reached the valley, he met a train of supplies going forward to St. Thomas, and as there were difficulties of fording and other obstacles, he spent some time in examining the country and marking out lines of communication. This brought him into contact with the villages of the valley, and he grew better informed of the kind of people among whom his colonists were to live. He did not, however, discern that under a usually pacific demeanor there was no lack of vigorous determination in this people, which it might not be so wise to irritate to the point of vengeance. He found, too, that they had a religion, perhaps prompting to some virtues he little suspected in his own, and that they jealously guarded their idols. He discovered that experience had given them no near acquaintance with the medicinal properties of the native herbs and trees. They associated myths with places, and would tell you that the sun and moon were but creatures of their island which had escaped from one of their caverns, and that mankind had sprung from the crannies of their rocky places. The bounteousness of nature, causing little care for the future, had spread among them a love of hospitality, and Columbus found himself welcome everywhere, and continued to be so till he and his abused their privileges.
1494. March 29. Columbus in Isabella.