CHAPTER IX.
YULE-TIDE IN AMERICA
"And they who do their souls no wrong,
But keep, at eve, the faith of morn.
Shall daily hear the angel-song,
'To-day the Prince of Peace is born.'"
—James Russell Lowell.
To people who go into a new country to live, Christmas, which is so generally a family day, must of necessity be a lonely, homesick one. They carry with them the memory of happy customs, of loved ones far away, and of observances which can never be held again. So many of the earliest Christmasses in America were peculiarly sad ones to the various groups of settlers; most especially was this the case with the first Christmas ever spent by Europeans in the New World.
The intrepid mariner, Christopher Columbus, entered the port of Bohio, in the Island of Hayti, on St. Nicholas Day, December 6, 1492, and in honor of the day named that port Saint Nicholas. The Pinta with her crew had parted from the others and gone her own way, so the Santa Maria and the Niña sailed on together, occasionally stopping where the port seemed inviting. While in one of these, Columbus heard of rich mines not far distant and started for them. The Admiral and his men were tired from continued watching, and as the sea was smooth and the wind favorable, they went to sleep leaving the ship in care of a boy. Who he was no one knows, but he was evidently the first Christian boy to pass a Christmas Eve on this continent,—and a sad one it was for him. The ship struck a sand-bank and settled, a complete wreck, in the waters of the New World. Fortunately no lives were lost, and the wreckage furnished material for the building of a fortress which occupied the men's time during the remainder of the Yule-tide.
The Niña was too small to accommodate two crews, therefore on Christmas Day many of the men were wondering who were to stay on that far-away island among the strange looking natives of whom they knew nothing.
The Chief of Guarico (Petit Anse), whom Columbus was on his way to visit at the time of the disaster, sent a fleet of canoes to the assistance of the strangers, and did what he could to make them happy during the day. The Spaniards and the natives worked until dawn on Christmas morning, bringing ashore what they could secure from the wreck, and storing it away on the island for future use. Strange to relate, they succeeded in saving all of their provisions, the spars, and even many of the nails of the wrecked Santa Maria. But what a Christmas morning for Columbus and his men, stranded on an island far, far from home, among a strange people! There were no festivities to be observed by that sad, care-worn company of three hundred men on that day, but the following morning Chief Guacanagari visited the Niña and took Columbus ashore, where a banquet was prepared in his honor, the first public function attended by Columbus in America. It can be pictured only in imagination. There on that beautiful island which seemed to them a paradise on earth, with tall trees waving their long fronds in the warm breeze, with myriads of birds such as they had never seen filling the air with song, Columbus stood, attired in his gorgeous uniform and dignified, as it befitted him to be, beside his host who was elegantly dressed in a shirt and a pair of gloves which Columbus had given him, with a coronet of gold on his head. The visiting chieftains with gold coronets moved about in nature's garb, among the "thousand,"—more or less,—who were present as guests. The feast consisted of shrimps, cassavi,—the same as the native bread of to-day,—and some of their nutritive roots.
It was not a sumptuous repast although it may have been a bountiful one, yet they probably enjoyed it.
The work of building a fortress began at once. Within ten days the Fortress of Navidad was completed. It stood on a hill and was surrounded with a broad, deep ditch for protection against natives and animals, and was to be the home of those of the company who remained in the New World, for the Niña was too small to convey all hands across the ocean to Spain, and nothing had been heard of the Pinta. Leaving biscuits sufficient for a year's supply, wine, and such provisions as could be spared, Columbus bade farewell to the forty men whom he was never to see again, and sailed for the Old World on January 4, 1493.