rounded it. The natives told the explorers that Guacanagari
himself had retired to the hills.

On receiving the report of these explorers Columbus sent out Ojeda
with a hundred men, and Corvalan with a similar party in different
directions. These officers, in their report, described the operation of
gold-washing, much as it is known to explorers in mining regions to-day.
The natives made a deep ditch into which the gold bearing sand should
settle. For more important work they had flat baskets in which they
shook the sand and parted it from the gold. With the left hand they
dipped up sand, handled this skilfully or "dextrously" with the right
hand, so that in a few minutes they could give grains of gold to the
gratified explorers. Ojeda brought home to Columbus one nugget which
weighed nine ounces.

They also brought tidings of the King of Canoaboa, of whom they had
heard before, and he is called by the name of Caunebo himself.(*) He was
afterwards carried, as a prisoner or as a hostage, on the way to Spain;
but died on the passage.

(*) The name is spelled in many different ways.

Columbus was able to dispatch the returning ships, with the encouraging
reports brought in by Meldonado and Ojeda, but with very little
gold. But he was obliged to ask for fresh supplies of food for the
colony--even in the midst of the plenty which he described; for he had
found already what all such leaders find, the difficulty of training men
to use food to which they were not accustomed. He sent also his Carib
prisoners, begging that they might be trained to a knowledge of the
christian religion and of the Spanish language. He saw, already, how
much he should need interpreters. The fleet sailed on the second of
February, and its reports were, on the whole, favorably received.

Columbus chose for the new city an elevation, ten leagues east of Monte
Christi, and at first gave to his colony the name of Martha. It is the
Isabella of the subsequent history.

The colonists were delighted with the fertility of the soil under the
tropical climate. Andalusia itself had not prepared them for it. They
planted seeds of peas, beans, lettuces, cabbages and other vegetables,
and declared that they grew more in eight days than they would have
grown in twenty at home. They had fresh vegetables in sixteen days after
they planted them; but for melons, pumpkins and other fruits of that
sort, they are generous enough to allow thirty days.

They had