THE TREASURE REVEALED 209 



Columbus heard the Arawaks speak of their interior country 

 as Cibao, which to his excited mind was enough hke the 

 Cypangu of Marco Polo to make him up-anchor on December 

 24 and sail away down the coast looking for the Japanese 

 Emperor in person. Instead, easing along the northern coast 

 from Cap Hatien, at Christmas midnight the flagship of Co- 

 lumbus ran plumb on a coral reef, and the heavy Atlantic 

 ground swell piled the Santa Maria hopelessly against the 

 jagged rock. Christmas day was marked by a strange contrast. 

 The pilot, Juan de la Cosa, fled the wrecked vessel, while the 

 native Indians in their canoes helped salvage the cargo. 



Here is a first picture of the western Paradise as seen by the 

 great Italian letter writer Peter Martyr, who was called out of 

 Rome to Spain ''that he might collect these marvelous and 

 new things, which should otherwise perhaps have lain drowned 

 in the whirlpool of oblivion." It was written: 'They saw cer- 

 tain men, who perceiving an unknown nation coming toward 

 them, flocked together and ran all into the thick woods, as 

 it had been hares coursed with greyhounds. . . . Shortly after 

 a great multitude came running to the shore to behold this 

 new nation, whom they thought to have descended from 

 heaven. They cast themselves by heaps into the sea and came 

 swimming to the ships, bringing gold with them, which they 

 changed with our men for earthen pots, pins, hawks-bells 

 and looking glasses. ... at even tide about the falling of the 

 sun, when our men went to prayer, and kneeled on their knees 

 after the manner of christians, they did the like also. . . . 

 They showed much humanity towards our men and helped 

 them to unlade their broken ship and with such celerity and 

 cheerfulness that no friend for friend or kinsman for kinsman, 

 in such a case moved with pity could do more." Columbus 

 went ashore as the guest of the chieftain, Guacanagari. Here 

 out of the wreckage the Spaniards built their first home in 

 the New World, the fort called Puerto de la Navidad, and 

 Columbus sailed with part of his crew for Spain. 



