At the point where he turned back, he had hauled his ships up on the shore to repair them.  From this point, on the second of November, he sent two officers inland, one of whom was a Jew, who knew Chaldee, Hebrew and a little Arabic, in the hope that they should find some one who could speak these languages.  With them went one of the Guanahani Indians, and one from the neighborhood.

They returned on the night between the fifth and sixth of November.  Twelve leagues off they had found a village of about fifty large houses, made in the form of tents.  This village had about a thousand inhabitants, according to the explorers.  They had received the ambassadors with cordial kindness, believing that they had descended from heaven.

They even took them in their arms and thus carried them to the finest house of all.  They gave them seats, and then sat round them on the ground in a circle.  They kissed their feet and hands, and touched them, to make sure whether they were really men of flesh and bone.

It was on this expedition that the first observation was made of that gift of America to the world, which has worked its way so deep and far into general use.  They met men and women who “carried live coals, so as to draw into their mouths the smoke of burning herbs.”  This was the account of the first observers.  But Las Casas says that the dry herbs were wrapped in another leaf as dry.  He says that “they lighted one end of the little stick thus formed, and sucked in or absorbed the smoke by the other, with which,” he says, “they put their flesh to sleep, and it nearly intoxicates them, and thus they say that they feel no fatigue.  These mosquetes, as we should call them, they call tobacos.  I knew Spaniards on this Island of Hispaniola who were accustomed to take them, who, on being reproved for it as a vice, replied that it was not in their power (in their hand) to leave off taking them.  I do not know what savour or profit they found in them.”  This is clearly a cigar.

The third or fourth of November, then, 1892, with the addition of nine days to change the style from old to new, may be taken by lovers of tobacco as the fourth centennial of the day when Europeans first learned the use of the cigar.

On the eleventh of November the repairs were completed.

He says that the Sunday before, November 11 it had seemed to him that it would be good to take some persons, from those of that river, to carry to the sovereigns, so that “they might learn our tongue, so as to know what there is in the country, and so that when they come back they may be tongues to the Christians, and receive our customs and the things of the faith.  Because I saw and know,” says the Admiral, “that this people has no religion (secta) nor are they idolaters, but very mild and without knowing what evil is, nor how to kill others, nor how to take them, and without arms, and so timorous that from one of our men ten of them fly, although they do sport with them, and ready to believe and knowing that there is a God in heaven, and sure that we have come from heaven; and very ready at any prayer which we tell them to repeat, and they make the sign of the cross.