In order to keep these six natives in a good temper Columbus kidnapped “seven women, large and small, and three children,” in order, he alleged, that the men might conduct themselves better in Spain because of having their “wives” with them; although whether these assorted women were indeed the wives of the kidnapped natives must at the best be a doubtful matter.  The three children, fortunately, had their father and mother with them; but that was only because the father, having seen his wife and children kidnapped, came and offered to go with them of his own accord.  This taking of the women raises a question which must be in the mind of any one who studies this extraordinary voyage—­the question of the treatment of native women by the Spaniards.  Columbus is entirely silent on the subject; but taking into account the nature of the Spanish rabble that formed his company, and his own views as to the right which he had to possess the persons and goods of the native inhabitants, I am afraid that there can be very little doubt that in this matter there is a good reason, for his silence.  So far as Columbus himself was concerned, it is probable that he was innocent enough; he was not a sensualist by nature, and he was far too much interested and absorbed in the principal objects of his expedition, and had too great a sense of his own personal dignity, to have indulged in excesses that would, thus sanctioned by him, have produced a very disastrous effect on the somewhat rickety discipline of his crew.  He was too wise a master, however, to forbid anything that it was not in his power to prevent; and it is probable that he shut his eyes to much that, if he did not tolerate it, he at any rate regarded as a matter of no very great importance.  His crew had by this time learned to know their commander well enough not to commit under his eyes offences for which he would have been sure to punish them.

For two days they ran along the coast with a fair wind; but on the 14th a head wind and heavy sea drove them into the shelter of a deep harbour called by Columbus Puerto del Principe, which is the modern Tanamo.  The number of islands off this part of the coast of Cuba confirmed Columbus in his profound geographical error; he took them to be “those innumerable islands which in the maps of the world are placed at the end of the east.”  He erected a great wooden cross on an eminence here, as he always did when he took possession of a new place, and made some boat excursions among the islands in the harbour.  On the 17th of November two of the six youths whom he had taken on board the week before swam ashore and escaped.  When he started again on his voyage he was greatly inconvenienced by the wind, which veered about between the north and south of east, and was generally a foul wind for him.  There is some difference of opinion as to what point of the wind the ships of Columbus’s time would sail on; but there is no doubt that they were extremely unhandy