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CHAP, in.] WEST INDIES. 79 



a remarkable speech of a venerable old man, a native 

 of Cuba, who approaching Christopher Columbus 

 with great reverence, and presenting a basket of fruit, 

 addressed him as follows. " Whether you are divini- 

 cc ties," (he observed), cf or mortal men, we know not- 

 " You are come into these countries with a force, 

 " against which, were we inclined to resist, resist- 

 *' ance would be folly. We are all therefore at your 

 mercy ; but if you are men, subject to mortality 

 like ourselves, you cannot be unapprized, that after 

 this life there is another, wherein a very different 

 portion is allotted to good and bad men. If therefore 

 you expect to die, and believe with us, that every 

 " one is to be rewarded in a future state, according to 

 <e his conduct in the present, you will do no hurt to 

 " those, who do none to you."|| 



Their notions of future happiness seem however 

 to have been narrow and sensual. They supposed 

 that the spirits of good men were conveyed to a plea- 

 sant valley, which they call Coy aba; a place of indo- 

 lent tranquillity, abounding with delicious fruits, cool 

 shades, and murmuring rivulets ;* in a country were 



II This remarkable circumstance happened on the yth of July 1494) 

 and is attested by Pet. Martyr, decad. i. lib. iii. and by Herrera, lib. iu 

 c.xiv. If it be asked how Columbus understood the cacique, the an- 

 swer is, that he had carried with him to Spain, in his former voyage, se- 

 veral of the Indians j one of whom, a native of Guanahani, who had re- 

 mained with him from October 1492, had acquired the Spanish language. 

 This man, whose name was Didacus, served him on this and other occa- 

 sions, both as a guide and interpreter. 



* Fer. Col. c. l*i. 



