In the morning a party was sent ashore to La Navidad.  Not a boat was in sight, nor any native canoes; the harbour was silent and deserted.  When the party had landed and gone up to the place where the fort had been built they found no fort there; only the blackened and charred remains of a fort.  The whole thing had been burned level with the ground, and amid the blackened ruins they found pieces of rag and clothing.  The natives, instead of coming to greet them, lurked guiltily behind trees, and when they were seen fled away into the woods.  All this was very disquieting indeed, and in significant contrast to their behaviour of the year before.  The party from the ship threw buttons and beads and bells to the retiring natives in order to try and induce them to come forward, but only four approached, one of whom was a relation of Guacanagari.  These four consented to go into the boat and to be rowed out to the ship.  Columbus then spoke to them through his interpreter; and they admitted what had been only too obvious to the party that went ashore—­that the Spaniards were all dead, and that not one of the garrison remained.  It seemed that two neighbouring kings, Caonabo and Mayreni, had made an attack upon the fort, burned the buildings, and killed and wounded most of the defenders; and that Guacanagari, who had been fighting on their behalf, had also been wounded and been obliged to retire.  The natives offered to go and fetch Guacanagari himself, and departed with that object.

In the greatest anxiety the Admiral and his company passed that day and night waiting for the King to come.  Early the next morning Columbus himself went ashore and visited the spot where the settlement had been.  There he found destruction whole and complete, with nothing but a few rags of clothing as an evidence that the place had ever been inhabited by human beings.  As Guacanagari did not appear some of the Spaniards began to suspect that he had had a hand in the matter, and proposed immediate reprisal; but Columbus, believing still in the man who had “loved him so much that it was wonderful” did not take this view, and his belief in Guacanagari’s loyalty was confirmed by the discovery that his own dwelling had also been burned down.

Columbus set some of his party searching in the ditch of the fort in case any treasure should have been buried there, as he had ordered it should be in event of danger, and while this was going on he walked along the coast for a few miles to visit a spot which he thought might be suitable for the new settlement.  At a distance of a mile or two he found a village of seven or eight huts from which the inhabitants fled at his approach, carrying such of their goods as were portable, and leaving the rest hidden in the grass.  Here were found several things that had belonged to the Spaniards and which were not likely to have been bartered; new Moorish mantles, stockings, bolts of cloth, and one of the Admiral’s lost anchors;