396
LIFE
ants.
A N D
V O Y A G E S
OF
[BOOK VII._
Columbus landed, therefore, attended by several men well
armed, and by the young Indian interpreter Diego Colon, the native of the island of Guanahani who had been baptized in Spain.
On arriving at the cottages, he found them deserted;
the fires also were abandoned, and there was not a human being to be seen. tains.
The Indians had all fled to the woods and moun
The sudden arrival of the ships had spread a panic
throughout the neighborhood, and apparently interrupted preparations for a rude but plentiful banquet.
the
There were great
quantities of fish, utias, and guanas; some suspended to the branches of the trees, others roasting on wooden spits before the fires. The Spaniards, accustomed of late to slender fare, fell without ceremony on this bounteous feast, thus spread for them, as it were, in the wilderness.
They abstained, however, from the
guanas, which they still regarded with disgust as a species of serpent, though they were considered so delicate a food by the savages, that, according to Peter Martyr, it was no more lawful for the common people to eat of them, than of peacocks and pheasants in Spain.* After their repast, as the Spaniards were roving about the vicinity, they beheld about seventy of the natives collected on the top of a lofty rock, and looking down upon them with great awe and amazement.
On attempting to approach them, they instantly
disappeared among the woods and clefts of the mountain.
One,
however, more bold or more curious than the rest, lingered on the brow of the precipice, gazing with timid wonder at the Span iards, partly encouraged by their friendly signs, but ready in an instant to bound away after his companions. * P. Martyr, decad. i. lib. iii.