410
LIFE
A N D
VOYAGES
OF
[BOOK V I I .
give them, at the first glance, the semblance of human figures. Whether the story originated in error or in falsehood, it made a deep impression on the mind of Columbus, who was predisposed to be deceived, and to believe every thing that favored the illu sion of his being in the vicinity of a civilized country. After he had explored the deep bay to the east, and ascer tained that it was not an arm of the sea, he continued westward, and proceeding about nine leagues, came to an inhabited shore, where he had communications with several of the natives.
They
were naked as usual; but that he attributed to their being mere fishermen inhabiting a savage coast; he presumed the civilized regions to lie in the interior.
As his Lucayan interpreter did not
understand the language, or rather dialect, of this part of Cuba, all the information which he could obtain from the natives was necessarily received through the erroneous medium of signs and gesticulations.
Deluded by his own favorite hypothesis, he un
derstood from them that, among certain mountains which he saw far off to the west, there was a powerful king, who reigned in great state over many populous provinces; that he wore a white garment which swept the ground; that he was called a saint ;* that he never spoke, but communicated his orders to his subjects by signs, which were implicitly o b e y e d . †In all this we see the busy imagination of the admiral interpreting every thing into unison with his preconceived ideas.
Las Casas assures us that
there was no cacique ever known in the island who wore gar ments, or answered in other respects to this description.
This
king, with a saintly title, was probably nothing more than a * Que le Llamaban santo e que traia tunica blanca que le arastra por el suelo.—Cura de los Palacios, cap. 128. †Herrera, Hist. Ind. , dec. i. lib. ii. cap. 14.