CHAP.
VI]
CHRISTOPHER
COLUMBUS.
195
therefore, and caught great quantities, and among them several kinds similar to those of Spain,—the first fish they had met with resembling those of their own country.
The notes of the bird
which they mistook for the nightingale, and of several others to which they were accustomed, reminded them strongly of the groves of their distant Andalusia.
They fancied the features of the sur
rounding country resembled those of the more beautiful provinces of Spain, and, in consequence, the admiral named the island Hispaniola. Desirous of establishing some intercourse with the natives, who had abandoned the coast on his arrival, he dispatched six men, well armed, into the interior.
They found several cultivated
fields, and traces of roads, and places where fires had been made, but the inhabitants had fled with terror to the mountains. Though the whole country was solitary and deserted, Colum bus consoled himself with the idea, that there must be populous towns in the interior, where the people had taken refuge, and that the fires he had beheld had been signal fires, like those lighted up on the mountains of Spain, in the times of Moorish war, to give the alarm when there was any invasion of the seaboard. On the 12th of December, Columbus, with great solemnity, erected a cross on a commanding eminence, at the entrance of the harbor, in sign of having taken possession.
As three sailors were
rambling about the vicinity, they beheld a large number of the natives, who immediately took flight; but the sailors pursued them, and captured a young female, whom they brought to the ships.
She was perfectly naked; a bad omen as to the civiliza
tion of the island; but an ornament of gold in the nose, gave hope of the precious metal.
The admiral soon soothed her terror by his
kindness, and by presents of beads, brass rings, hawks' bells, and
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