THE LUC AY AN INDIANS. 



93 



while new beauties rose up and unfolded themselves before me as 

 the islands I had passed dropped down toward the horizon behind 

 me and faded away, until there stole over me the feeling that the 

 whole might be some fairy landscape traced by fancy in the sum- 

 mer clouds, and that if I closed my eyes for a minute I might 

 find it all dissolving into air. 



As I passed the little inlets, with their lines of white breakers, 

 and beyond them the deep blue of the open ocean fading in the 

 distance into the lighter blue of the sky ; or, as I leaned over the 

 rail while the vessel slipped on as if it were hung in mid-air ; as I 

 watched the gaudy fishes darting over the white sand many fath- 

 oms below, or caught glimpses into the deep dark caves between 

 the great, dome-like coral-heads which swept up in smooth curves 

 from the depths almost to the surface, and overhung cool grottoes 

 hung with gorgeous anemones and sea-fans and sea-feathers, 

 among which innumerable animals in an endless diversity of 

 strange forms could be dimly seen as the vessel slipped by ; as I 

 drifted on day after day, and passed one charming spot after 

 another, only to find still more beauty beyond, I could not escape 

 the thought that in this enchanted land of beauty which no brush 

 could paint, where every prospect pleases, man has been unuttera- 

 bly vile, and this not the heathen in his blindness, but the con- 

 queror who, as old Bernal Diaz quaintly but frankly puts- it, 

 " Took his life in his hand that he might give light to them who 

 sit in darkness, and satisfy the thirst for gold which all men feel." 



Less than fifteen years after the discovery the forty thousand 

 Ceboynas were gone, and the Lucayas were left desolate. For 

 nearly two hundred years every one of these thousands of lovely 

 islands was abandoned to the parrots and lizards, and, except for 

 the visits of Ponce de Leon, in his search for the magic fountain, 

 and an occasional English sailor, no boat moved through these quiet 

 sounds; until at last the peaceful islanders who, as Coumbus 

 writes to Queen Isabella, were the best people on earth, and loved 

 their neighbors as themselves, were replaced by a new population, 

 and the banner of the Jolly Rodger gathered here, from the ports 

 of Europe, the worst human scum which civilization has ever 

 produced. Who could cruise through this earthly paradise without 

 meditating upon the fruit of our civilization as it has here devel- 

 oped itself ? 



While Columbus had none of the vices of lesser men, he felt 

 bound to fulfill his promise to enrich those who had aided him ; 

 and on his first Sunday, October 14th, only two days after his 

 landing, the gentle influences of the Sabbath in this strange and 

 beautiful land moved him to commit his impressions to writing, 

 and, while his pen overflows with the delights of the New World 

 and the loveliness of the people, he enters in his log that he is 



