About midday he reached another island to the southeast.  He sailed along the coast until evening, when he saw yet another island in the distance to the south-west; and he therefore lay-to for the night.  At dawn the next morning he landed on the island and took formal possession of it, naming it Santa Maria de la Concepcion, which is the Rum Cay of the modern charts.  As the wind chopped round and he found himself on a lee-shore he did not stay there, but sailed again before night.  Two of the unhappy prisoners from Guanahani at this point made good their escape by swimming to a large canoe which one of the natives of the new island had rowed out—­a circumstance which worried Columbus not a little; since he feared it would give him a bad name with the natives.  He tried to counteract it by loading with presents another native who came to barter balls of cotton, and sending him away again.

The effect of all that he was seeing, of the bridge of islands that seemed to be stretching towards the south-west and leading him to the region of untold wealth, was evidently very stimulating and exciting to Columbus.  His Journal is almost incoherent where he attempts to set down all he has got to say.  Let us listen to him for a moment: 

“These islands are very green and fertile, and the breezes are very soft, and there may be many things which I do not know, because I did not wish to stop, in order to discover and search many islands to find gold.  And since these people make signs thus, that they wear gold on their arms and legs,—­and it is gold, because I showed them some pieces which I have,—­I cannot fail, with the aid of our Lord, in finding it where it is native.  And being in the middle of the gulf between these two islands, that is to say, the island of Santa Maria and this large one, which I named Fernandina, I found a man alone in a canoe who was going from the island of Santa Maria to Fernandina, and was carrying a little of his bread which might have been about as large as the fist, and a gourd of water, and a piece of reddish earth reduced to dust and afterwards kneaded, and some dry leaves—­[Tobacco]—­which must be a thing very much appreciated among them, because they had already brought me some of them as a present at San Salvador:  and he was carrying a small basket of their kind, in which he had a string of small glass beads and two blancas, by which I knew that he came from the island of San Salvador, and had gone from there to Santa Maria and was going to Fernandina.  He came to the ship:  I caused him to enter it, as he asked to do so, and I had his canoe placed on the ship and had everything which he was carrying guarded and I ordered that bread and honey be given him to eat and something to drink.  And I will go to Fernandina thus and will give him everything, which belongs to him, that he may give good reports of us.  So that, when your Highnesses send here, our Lord pleasing, those who come may receive honour and the