s that
he was sometimes blinded by it; but the excitement of the strange
phenomena surrounding him kept him up, and his powers of observation,
always acute, suffered no diminution. There were no inhabitants to be
seen as they sailed along the coast, but monkeys climbed and chattered in
the trees by the shore, and oysters were found clinging to the branches
that dipped into the water. At last, in a bay where they anchored to
take in water, a native canoe containing three, men was seen cautiously
approaching; and the men, who were shy, were captured by the device of a
sailor jumping on to the gunwale of the canoe and overturning it, the
natives being easily caught in the water, and afterwards soothed and
captivated by the unfailing attraction of hawks' bells. They were tall
men with long hair, and they told Columbus that the name of their country
was Paria; and when they were asked about other inhabitants they pointed
to the west and signified that there was a great population in that
direction.

On the 10th of August 1498 a party landed on this coast and formally took
possession of it in the name of the Sovereigns of Spain. By an unlucky
chance Columbus himself did not land. His eyes were troubling him so
much that he was obliged to lie down in his cabin, and the formal act of
possession was performed by a deputy. If he had only known! If he could
but have guessed that this was indeed the mainland of a New World that
did not exist even in his dreams, what agonies he would have suffered
rather than permit any one else to pronounce the words of annexation!
But he lay there in pain and suffering, his curious mystical mind
occupied with a conception very remote indeed from the truth.

For in that fertile hotbed of imagination, the Admiral's brain, a new and
staggering theory had gradually been taking shape. As his ships had been
wafted into this delicious region, as the airs had become sweeter, the
vegetation more luxuriant, and the water of the sea fresher,--he had
solemnly arrived at the conclusion that he was approaching the region of
the true terrestrial Paradise: the Garden of Eden that some of the
Fathers had declared to be situated in the extreme east of the Old World,
and in a region so high that the flood had not overwhelmed it. Columbus,
thinking hard in his cabin, blood and brain a little fevered, comes to
the conclusion that the world is not round but pear-shaped. He knows
that all this fresh water i