THE ABORIGINES. 311 
cazique’s sisters were preferred on account of the greater certainty 
of royal blood. The sovereigns were looked up to with reverence 
and obeyed with submission. Royal ornaments, numerous at- 
tendants, and a multitude of wives attested their royal power. 
Heroic songs, hymns of praise, public dances of honor, together 
with the notes of musical instrnments made of shells, and the 
deafening noise of rude drums, formed a part of their funeral 
obsequies. 
The Bahamas interested but did not satisfy the the Spaniards. 
They sought in vain in the coralline rocks for the golden ores 
that gilded their fevered dreams. The passion for 
“Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! 
Bright and yellow, hard and cold,” 
was all pervading, and so absorbing and intense that they seemed 
dead to every tender sentiment and ennobling impulse. For a 
time poverty did for the islanders more than the greatest riches 
could have accomplished—peace and security, and the strange 
visitors whom they were ready to worship as divine, departed. 
Guileless, unsuspecting, generous and unselfish themselves, 
how could these aborigines understand the wonderful beings, who, 
- from the vast solitudes of an illimitable ocean, had suddenly 
landed upon their picturesque shores? In the distant east from 
whence the strangers had come, only the morning sun, in golden 
effulgence, had ever before emerged. Were not these then, the 
children of the sun? Had they not all of the divine and none 
of the human? No wonder, that as Herrera states, they were 
at first never satisfied with looking at the Spaniards, but knelt, 
lifted up their hands and gave thanks to God, calling upon each 
other to admire the heavenly men! 
Afterwards, a new and strange interest invested these islands 
