after they had overcome their apprehension. And this does not spring from ignorance, for they are very intelligent, and navigate all these seas, and relate everything to us, so that it is astonishing what a good account they are able to give of everything; but they have never seen men with clothes on, nor vessels like ours."
Such was the character of the natives whom Columbus found in the islands of the numerous Archipelago off the south coast of Cuba, and in those of St. Catharine and Hispaniola, all of which he visited in his first great voyage of discovery, and claimed as the property of his sovereigns. In these formal proclamations and in the erection of the fort, which was afterwards raised on the island of Hispaniola, the innocent natives took an active part, rendering every assistance in their power, little dreaming that these acts were the forerunners of bondage, and of that horrible system of slavery which so long prevailed in those islands, and still contaminates the soil of the largest of them all, the only one that now remains in the possession of the crown of Spain.
