December, 1492, he saw a canoe made of the hole of a single tree, 95 palms long and capable of carrying 150 persons. "Leaving the river, they came to a cove in which there were five large canoes, so well constructed that it was a pleasure to look at them. They were under spreading trees, and a path led to them from a very well built boathouse, so thatched that neither sun nor rain could do any harm. Within it there was another canoe made out of a single tree like the others, like a galley with 17 benches. It was a pleasant sight to look upon such goodly work.
"The Admiral ascended a mountain, and afterward found the country level and cultivated with many things. In the middle there was a large village, and they came upon the people suddenly, but as soon as they were seen the men and women took to flight. The Admiral made the Indian from on board, who was with him, give them bells, copper ornaments, and glass beads, green and yellow, with which they were well content. He saw that they had no gold nor any other precious thing, and that it would suffice to leave them in peace. The whole district was well peopled. … No arms are carried by them except wands, on the point of which a short piece of wood is fixed, hardened by fire, and these they are very ready to exchange.
"Returning to where he had left the boats, he sent back some men up the hill, because he fancied he had seen a large apiary. Before those he had sent could return, they were joined by many Indians, and they went to the boats, where the Admiral was waiting with all his people. One of the natives advanced into the river near the stern of the boat and made a long speech, which the Admiral did not understand. At intervals the other Indians raised their hands to heaven and shouted. The Admiral thought that the orator was assuring him that he was pleased at his arrival. But he saw the Indian who came from the ship change the color of his face and turn as yellow as wax, trembling much and indicating to the Admiral by signs that he should leave the river, as they were going to kill him. The Admiral then pointed to a cross-bow which one of his followers had, and showed it to the Indians, making them understand that they would all be slain, because that weapon killed people at a great distance. He also drew a sword from its sheath and showed it to them, telling them that it, too, would slay them. Thereupon they all took to flight; while the Indian from the ship still trembled from cowardice, though he was a tall, strong man."
Columbus then determined to seek further acquaintance with the natives, and accordingly had his boat rowed to a point on the shore of the river where they were assembled in great numbers. They were naked, and painted; some wearing tufts of feathers on their heads, and all carrying bundles of darts. "I came to them," said Columbus, "and gave them bread, asking for the darts, in exchange for which I gave copper ornaments, bells and glass beads. This made them peaceable, so that they came to the boats again and gave us what they had. The sailors had killed a turtle, and the shell was on the boat, cut into pieces, some of which the sailors gave them in exchange for a bundle of darts. They were like the other people we had seen, with the same belief that we had come from heaven." They were ready, he added, to give anything that they had in exchange for any trifle, which they would accept without saying that it was little, and Columbus believed that they would thus give away gold and spices, if they had had any. In one of the houses which he entered "shells and other things were fastened to the ceiling." He thought that it was a temple, and he inquired, by signs, if such was the case and if prayers were there offered. The natives replied in the negative, and one of them climbed up to take down the ceiling ornaments and give them to Columbus, who accepted a few of them.
It was early in November, 1492, that one of the most noteworthy discoveries in relation to Cuba was made. At that time Columbus sent inland from the port at the mouth of the Rio de Mares two men, Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres, to explore the inland country and to find if possible the high road to the capital and palace of the Great Khan. These men did not find what they had been sent for, but something else, which proved in after years to be of incalculable value to Cuba and to the world. To quote Las Casas:
"They met on the road many men and women, passing to their villages, the men always with half-burned brands in their hands and certain herbs for smoking. These herbs are dry and are placed in a dry leaf made in the shape of the paper tubes which the boys make at Easter. Lighted at one end, at the other the smoke is sucked or drawn in with the breath. The effect of it is to make them sleepy and as it were intoxicated, and they say that using it relieves the feeling of fatigue. These rolls they call 'tabacos.'" Some of Columbus's men, when it was reported to them, tried smoking the "tabacos," and the habit soon became prevalent among the Spanish colonists in Hispaniola.
These few items, then, compose practically the sum and substance of the knowledge which Columbus acquired of that land which was, second to only the continent, by far the most important of all his discoveries. They are few and meagre. It is indeed doubtful if history records an even approximately comparable instance of the disappearance of a numerous and capable people from a country of vast interest and importance, leaving behind them so few traces of themselves and so little information concerning them. For these things are not merely all that Columbus learned about Cuba. They are all that his successors learned and that the world has ever learned about Cuba as it existed prior to and at the time of the great discovery. Tobacco, hammocks, canoes, and the name of the island and the names of various places on it which have persisted in spite of the repeated attempts to substitute a new nomenclature; these are the world's memorials of pre-Columbian Cuba.
The brief visits and superficial inspection which we have recorded were not, however, destined to be the full compass of the Discoverer's personal relationship to Cuba. While he did not again visit the island in life, nor give to it any of the attention which ampler knowledge would have shown him it deserved, his mortal remains were conveyed thither, and there remained for a considerable period; though by a strange fatality this fact, well authenticated as it is, has been persistently and elaborately disputed, until the tomb of Columbus has in the minds of many become almost as much a matter of speculation and uncertainty as the place of his birth.
It was on Ascension Day, May 20, 1506, that Columbus died at Valladolid, in Spain, and there his body was laid to rest in the parish church of Santa Maria de la Antigua, a church of the Franciscan Fathers. The date of the first removal is unknown, and is much disputed. Some have placed it as late as the year 1513, while others, as the result of later and more assured research, declare it to have been within a year or two, or at most within three years, of his death. Of the new place of sepulture, however, there is no question. It was in a chapel of the Carthusian monastery of Santa Maria de las Cuevas, at Seville; where also, years afterward, were laid the remains of his son, Diego, who died at Montalban on February 23, 1526.
But as in life, so in death Columbus must needs be a wanderer. In 1542 the city of Santo Domingo, the capital of that island colony of Hispaniola to which Columbus's chief attention had been given, demanded to be made the repository of the body of its founder. Accordingly, Charles I decreed the removal, and the bodies of Christopher Columbus and his son Diego were both transferred from Seville to a double tomb in the cathedral of Santo Domingo, hard by the fortress in which the Discoverer had once been confined by Bobadilla as a prisoner. Thus far the record was and is clear; and for two and a half centuries the tomb remained inviolate. Indeed, it was so little meddled with that its precise location became a matter of doubt, save that it was somewhere "in the main sanctuary" of the cathedral.
The first attempt to determine it was made about 1783 by the French politician and writer, Moreau de Saint-Mery, a kinsman of the Empress Josephine and a member of the Colonial Council of Santo Domingo. Diligent inquiry, without actual exhumation, resulted in the information that the remains of Christopher Columbus, enclosed first in a leaden casket and then in a massive coffin of stone, lay underneath the Gospel side of the sanctuary, and that those of his brother, Bartholomew Columbus, similarly enclosed, lay underneath the Epistle side. This was contrary, in one respect, to the understanding of years before, which was that it was the body of Columbus's grandson Luis which lay under the Epistle side of the sanctuary. The problem was complicated by the fact that the cathedral had been so remodelled that the tomb of Columbus was underneath its wall, where actual examination was difficult; and in fact no exhumation was then attempted.
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