and immediately a canoe with three Indians
came off to the caravel anchored nearest the shore, when the captain,
springing in, upset her, and the people, as they were swimming, were
secured. Being brought to the Admiral, they were presented with beads,
hawks' bells, and sugar. The report they gave in consequence, on
returning on shore, induced many other natives to come off. They were
tall, finely formed, and graceful in their movements, being armed with
bows and arrows and targets. The men wore cotton cloths of various
colours about their heads and loins, but the women were destitute of
clothing. They brought maize and other eatables, with beverages, some
white, made from maize, others green, expressed from various fruits.
They judged of everything by the sense of smell. As they came near they
smelt the boat, then smelt the people, as they did all the articles
offered them. Although setting little value on the beads, they were
delighted with the hawks' bells, and still more so with anything of
brass. Taking some of the people as guides, he proceeded west for eight
leagues, to a point which he called the Needle. So beautiful was the
country, that he gave it the name of The Garden.

Here many natives came off, and invited the Admiral on shore in the name
of their King. Many wore collars and burnished plates of that inferior
kind of gold, called by the Indians _guanin_, and they pointed to a land
in the west, from whence they said it came; but the cupidity of the
Spaniards was excited by strings of pearls round the arms of some of
them. These, they said, were procured at the sea-coast on the northern
side of Paria, and they showed the mother-of-pearl shells from which
they were taken.

To secure specimens to be sent to Spain, Columbus dispatched some boats
to that part of the shore. Numbers of the natives came down, and
treating the Spaniards as beings of a superior order, regaled them with
bread and various fruits of excellent flavour. They had among them tame
parrots, one of light green with a yellow neck, and the tips of the
wings of a bright red, others of a vivid scarlet, except some azure
feathers in the wing. These they gave to the Spaniards, who, however,
cared for nothing but pearls, many necklaces and bracelets of which were
given by the Indian women in exchange for hawks' bells or articles of
brass.

The Spaniards returned on board highly delighted at the way they had
been treated, while the qu