“All this coast,” says the Admiral, “and the part of the island which I saw, is all nearly flat, and the island the most beautiful thing I ever saw, for if the others are very beautiful this one is more so.”  He anchored at a cape which was so beautiful that he named it Cabo Fermoso, the Beautiful Cape, “so green and so beautiful,” he says, “like all the other things and lands of these islands, that I do not know where to go first, nor can I weary my eyes with seeing such beautiful verdure and so different from ours.  And I believe that there are in them many herbs and many trees, which are of great value in Spain for dyes (or tinctures) and for medicines of spicery.  But I do not know them, which I greatly regret.  And as I came here to this cape there came such a good and sweet odor of flowers or trees from the land that it was the sweetest thing in the world.”

He heard that there was a king in the interior who wore clothes and much gold, and though, as he says, the Indians had so little gold that whatever small quantity of it the king wore it would appear large to them, he decided to visit him the next day.  He did not do so, however, as he found the water too shallow in his immediate neighborhood, and then had not enough wind to go on, except at night.

Sunday morning, October 21, he anchored, apparently more to the west, and after having dined, landed.  He found but one house, from which the inhabitants were absent; he directed that nothing in it should be touched.  He speaks again of the great beauty of the island, even greater than that of the others he had seen.  “The singing of the birds,” he says, “seems as if a man would never seek to leave this place, and the flocks of parrots which darken the sun, and fowls and birds of so many kinds and so different from ours that it is wonderful.  And then there are trees of a thousand sorts, and all with fruit of their kinds.  And all have such an odor that it is wonderful, so that I am the most afflicted man in the world not to know them.”

They killed a serpent in one of the lakes upon this island, which Las Casas says is the Guana, or what we call the Iguana.

In seeking for good water, the Spaniards found a town, from which the inhabitants were going to fly.  But some of them rallied, and one of them approached the visitors.  Columbus gave him some little bells and glass beads, with which he was much pleased.  The Admiral asked him for water, and they brought it gladly to the shore in calabashes.

He still wished to see the king of whom the Indians had spoken, but meant afterward to go to “another very great island, which I believe must be Cipango, which they call Colba.”  This is probably a mistake in the manuscript for Cuba, which is what is meant.  It continues, “and to that other island which they call Bosio” (probably Bohio) “and the others which are on the way, I will see these in passing. * * * But still, I am determined to go to the mainland and to the city of Quisay and to give your Highnesses’ letters to the Grand Khan, and seek a reply and come back with it.”