The Coasting of Columbus. 191 



history of the island at all. Their historical lore is limited to 

 the times of the wreckers, and their information respecting 

 Columbus may be summed up in the query of the old negro 

 who took me across from Fortune to Watlings : " Say, boss, 

 who is dis ole man Columbia you is so anxshus about? Here 

 I's been sailing dese Bahama islands more'n fort}^ year, an' 

 I's neber seen him yit." They declare that the relics of the 

 Indian are " sho' enuff t'underbolts " and that they came down 

 from the sk}^ 



One old black man solemnly assured me that he himself saw 

 a celt descend, strike a tree and split it, and that he picked 

 it up at the roots of the tree " after de lightning done pass by." 

 The name of " thunderbolt," is universal, as applied to these 

 objects, throughout the West Indies; in the Spanish island 

 they are known as '^ piedras de 7-aya,^^ and the present descend- 

 ants of the Caribs call them by that name. 



But we will not leave Columbus at Watlings; he sailed 

 thence over to Rum cay ; after that to Long island, which he 

 called Fernandina, and then to the present Fortune and Crooked 

 islands, the former of which he called Isabella. 



The island first discovered by Columbus is very little visited 

 and is difficult of access. Having come up toward it from 

 Haiti, and having been dropped from the steamer at Fortune, 

 only 100 miles away, I was ten clays in the latter island before 

 I could get taken across to Watlings. Respecting the delights 

 of travel in the Bahamas during the summer time, with the 

 thermometer away up in the nineties, no means of communica- 

 tion except dirty " turtlers " manned and ofiicered by black men, 

 and no shade all day save the shadow of the main-boom, I will 

 have nothing to say, except that I do not want to repeat the 

 experience. 



From Isabella or Fortune island Columbus sailed south- 

 westward, toward a land the natives told him of, and which they 

 called " Cuba." His first landing there was at or near the pres- 

 ent port of Jibara, on the northern coast of Cuba, and thence he 

 sailed eastward, entering the harbor of Baracoa, rounding the 

 cape known as Point Maisi, and discovering another large island 

 to the southward, that of Haiti. He first saw this new island on 

 December 5 ; arrived at Point Saint Nicolas (recently a subject of 

 dispute between Haiti and this government) on the seventh, and 

 coasted until the twenty-fourth. It was on that date, after leis- 



