They saw a great many geese, and the strange dogs that did not bark, and they saw potatoes also, although they did not know what they were.  Columbus, having heard this report, and contemplating these gentle amiable creatures, so willing to give all they had in return for a scrap of rubbish, feels his heart lifted in a pious aspiration that they might know the benefits of the Christian religion.  “I have to say, Most Serene Princes,” he writes,

“that by means of devout religious persons knowing their language well, all would soon become Christians:  and thus I hope in our Lord that Your Highnesses will appoint such persons with great diligence in order to turn to the Church such great peoples, and that they will convert them, even as they have destroyed those who would not confess the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit:  and after their days, as we are all mortal, they will leave their realms—­in a very tranquil condition and freed from heresy and wickedness, and will be well received before the Eternal Creator, Whom may it please to give them a long life and a great increase of larger realms and dominions, and the will and disposition to spread the holy Christian religion, as they have done up to the present time, Amen.  To-day I will launch the ship and make haste to start on Thursday, in the name of God, to go to the southeast and seek gold and spices, and discover land.” 
               Thus Christopher Columbus, in the Name of God,

     November 11, 1492.

CHAPTER II

THE EARTHLY PARADISE

When Columbus weighed anchor on the 12th of November he took with him six captive Indians.  It was his intention to go in search of the island of Babeque, which the Indians alleged lay about thirty leagues to the east-south-east, and where, they said, the people gathered gold out of the sand with candles at night, and afterwards made bars of it with a hammer.  They told him this by signs; and we have only one more instance of the Admiral’s facility in interpreting signs in favour of his own beliefs.  It is only a few days later that in the same Journal he says, “The people of these lands do not understand me, nor do I nor any other person I have with me understand them; and these Indians I am taking with me, many times understand things contrary to what they are.”  It was a fault at any rate not exclusively possessed by the Indians, who were doubtless made the subject of many philological experiments on the part of the interpreter; all that they seemed to have learned at this time were certain religious gestures, such as making the Sign of the Cross, which they did continually, greatly to the edification of the crew.