9 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



so different ; nor can it be said that they have been grafted, 

 because these trees grow wild in the field and nobody cares for 

 them. 



" The fishes here are so different from ours that it is a wonder. 

 Some look like cocks of the finest colors in the world, blue, yellow, 

 red, and all colors, and others variegated in a thousand fashions ; 

 their different hues being so exquisite that nobody can contem- 

 plate them without wondering, and feeling great delight in seeing 

 them. There are also whales here ; but on shore I saw no beasts 

 whatever, save parrots and lizards." 



Columbus found all these islands much more thickly inhabited 

 than they are to-day, by a race of people who called themselves 

 Ceboynas, although his misconception as to the nature of his dis- 

 covery led him to bestow on them the name by which all the ab- 

 original inhabitants of this continent are now known. 



As they had very few artificial wants, and were able to live 

 without forethought or care in a land which knows no change of 

 sea ms, where the harvest ripens without attention, and a tempt- 

 ing fish for the day's dinner can be picked out and speared as if it 

 floated in the clear water of an aquarium, they were totally igno- 

 rant of much that the Spaniards regarded as essential for man, 

 and Columbus, mistaking simplicity for destitution, makes the 

 entry in his log-book that he " thought them to be a very poor 

 people." It is true that, except for the " one who wore in his nose 

 a piece of gold of the size of half a castellano, on which were 

 letters," he found no indications of the wealth of India ; but before 

 he had been a week in the New World he discovered three luxuries 

 which have been warmly welcomed by the whole civilized world. 



On the third day he enters in his log that " the men I sent for 

 water told me that the houses were well swept and perfectly clean, 

 and that their beds and coverings looked like cotton nets, which 

 they called liamacas " ; and within a few days, as he extended his 

 explorations to the neighboring Antilles, he met with cigars and 

 chocolate. Poor the Ceboynas might be in the matter of useless 

 clothing and arms, but a race which could doze idly in hammocks, 

 under the blue sky, in the warm sea-breeze, idly puffing their 

 Havana cigars, as they gazed out on to the flashing water and 

 waited for their crops to ripen, were not completely destitute and 

 squalid. Civilized man might well covet even a harder life than 

 that of the natives of the lovely Lucayan Islands before the dis- 

 covery, but every school-boy knows the rude awakening which 

 the peaceful Ceboynas soon received. 



Two years ago I enjoyed the delights of a long cruise, in the 

 schooner which carries the mails, through the calm, landlocked 

 sounds which thread in all directions the mazes of the archipelago, 

 and the gentle but unfailing breeze bore me on day after day, 



