crude fishing boats, obviously carpentered by hand from 

 a variety of woods, and calked with black tar, were dravim 

 up on the beach. Three others strained at their moorings 

 just offshore in the choppy waves kicked up by the after- 

 noon's prevailing east wind. 



We walked the remaining quarter mile to Limonade 

 Bord de Mer through loose, deep sand, our heads bent into 

 the wind as we struggled along. My side pained me and 

 I was breathing hard. I wondered why I had ever set out 

 on such a trip, when the doctor had warned me against 

 going out on Sea Diver because it would be too exhaust- 

 ing. 



The village proved to be a scattering of poor, thatched 

 huts around the nucleus of the old French Colonial church, 

 whose steeple had been the focal point of many of the bear- 

 ings we had taken from Sea Diver while out on the reefs. 

 It was a desolate spot — no grass, no trees, only a low, 

 shrubby growth in the vicinity of the houses, and no fer- 

 tile land for garden patches. We found that there was only 

 brackish water in the wells behind the church, and that 

 fresh water had to be carried from the Grande Riviere, 

 more than a mile away. All day long the village was ex- 

 posed to the hot, tropical sun as well as to the full fury 

 of frequent stormy winds and seas. 



Unless this stretch of beach had differed vastly in 

 Columbus's time, I could not believe he would have picked 

 such a location for Navidad. Yet Morison was convinced 

 that Navidad had stood along this seacoast, within a half 

 mile of the little church. On the other hand, St.-Mery, who 

 knew the area well in the decade before the black revolu- 

 tion, believed that Navidad was located more than a league 

 up the Fosse River. 



It seemed improbable to me that the Indians would 

 have chosen this barren shore for a permanent village. 

 Wasn't it more likely that they would have selected higher 



202 Sea Diver 



