There was trouble on this day, because some of the crew had found an Indian with a piece of gold in his nose, and they got a scolding from Columbus for not detaining him and bartering with him for it.  There was bad weather also, with heavy rain and a threatening of tempest; there was a difference of opinion with Martin Alonso Pinzon about which way they should go round the island:  but the next day the weather cleared, and the wind settled the direction of their course for them.  Columbus, whose eye never missed anything of interest to the sailor and navigator, notes thus early a fact which appears in every book of sailing directions for the Bahama Islands—­that the water is so clear and limpid that the bottom can be seen at a great depth; and that navigation is thus possible and even safe among the rockstrewn coasts of the islands, when thus performed by sight and with the sun behind the ship.  He was also keenly alive to natural charm and beauty in the new lands that he was visiting, and there are unmistakable fragments of himself in the journal that speak eloquently of his first impressions.  “The singing of the little birds is such that it appears a man would wish never to leave here, and the flocks of parrots obscure the sun.”

But life, even to the discoverer of a New World, does not consist of wandering in the groves, and listening to the singing birds, and smelling the flowers, and remembering the May nights of Andalusia.  There was gold to be found and the mainland of Cathay to be discovered, and a letter, written by the sovereigns at his earnest request, to be delivered to the Great Khan.  The natives had told him of an island called Samoete to the southward, which was said to contain a quantity of gold.  He sailed thither on the 19th, and called it Isabella; its modern name is Crooked Island.  He anchored here and found it to be but another step in the ascending scale of his delight; it was greener and more beautiful than any of the islands he had yet seen.  He spent some time looking for the gold, but could not find any; although he heard of the island of Cuba, which he took to be the veritable Cipango.  He weighed anchor on October 24th and sailed south-west, encountering some bad weather on the way; but on Sunday the 28th he came up with the north coast of Cuba and entered the mouth of a river which is the modern Nuevitas.  To the island of Cuba he gave the name of Juana in honour of the young prince to whom his son Diego had been appointed a page.

If the other islands had seemed beautiful to him, Cuba seemed like heaven itself.  The mountains grandly rising in the interior, the noble rivers and long sweeping plains, the headlands melting into the clear water, and the gorgeous colours and flowers and birds and insects on land acted like a charm on Columbus and his sailors.  As they entered the river they lowered a boat in order to go ahead and sound for an anchorage; and two native canoes put