CHAP. I X ]
CHRISTOPHER
COLUMBUS.
357
they soon constructed the first road formed in the New World; and which was called El Puerto de los Hidalgos, or The Gentle men's Pass, in honor of the gallant cavaliers who effected it.* On the following day, the army toiled up this steep defile, and arrived where the gore of the mountain opened into the interior. Here a land of promise suddenly burst upon their view.
It was
the same glorious prospect which had delighted Ojeda and his companions.
Below lay a vast and delicious plain, painted and
enameled, as it were, with all the rich variety of tropical vegeta tion.
The magnificent forests presented that mingled beauty and
majesty of vegetable forms known only to these generous climates. Palms of prodigious height, and spreading mahogany trees, tow ered from amid a wilderness of variegated foliage.
Freshness
and verdure were maintained by numerous streams, which mean dered gleaming through the deep bosom of the woodland; while various villages and hamlets, peeping from among the trees, and the smoke of others rising out of the midst of the forests, gave signs of a numerous population.
The luxuriant landscape ex
tended as far as the eye could reach, until it appeared to melt away and mingle with the horizon.
The Spaniards gazed with
rapture upon this soft voluptuous country, which seemed to realize their ideas of a terrestrial paradise ; and Columbus, struck with its vast extent, gave it the name of the Vega Real, or Royal Plain.† * Hist. del Almirante, cap. 50.
Hidalgo, i. e., Hijo de Algo, literally, “ a
son of somebody," in contradistinction to an obscure and low-born man, a son of nobody. † Las Casas, Hist. Ind., lib. i. cap. 90, M S . Extract of a Letter from T. S. Heneken, Esq., dated Santiago (St. Do mingo), 20th September, 1847.—The route over which Columbus traced his