CHAP. X . ]
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.
221
On one occasion, he came to meet him on his landing, attended by five tributary caciques, each carrying a coronet of gold; they conducted him with great deference to the house already men tioned, where, seating him in one of the chairs, Guacanagari took off his own coronet of gold and placed it upon his head: Colum bus in return took from his neck a collar of fine-colored beads, which he put round that of the cacique ; he invested him with his own mantle of fine cloth, gave him a pair of colored boots, and put on his finger a large silver ring, upon which metal the Indians set a great value, it not being found in their island. The cacique exerted himself to the utmost to procure a great quantity of gold for the admiral before his departure for Spain. The supplies thus furnished, and the vague accounts collected through the medium of signs and imperfect interpretations, gave Columbus magnificent ideas of the wealth in the interior of this island.
The names of caciques, mountains, and provinces, were
confused together in his imagination, and supposed to mean various places where great treasure was to be found; above all, the name of Cibao continually occurred, the golden region among the moun tains, whence the natives procured most of the ore for their orna ments.
In the pimento or red pepper which abounded in the
island, he fancied he found a trace of oriental spices, and he thought he had met with specimens of rhubarb. Passing, with his usual excitability, from a state of doubt and anxiety to one of sanguine anticipation, he now considered his shipwreck as a providential event mysteriously ordained by heaven to work out the success of his enterprise.
Without this seeming
disaster, he should never have remained to find out the secret wealth of the island, but should merely have touched at various parts of the coast, and passed on.
As a proof that the particular