r "East Indies" respectively, to distinguish American from
Asiatic--"Indian corn" means American, but "Indian ink" means Asiatic,
etc. Even after his fourth and last voyage Columbus believed that the
continent, as well as the islands, was a portion of eastern Asia, and he
died in that belief, without any suspicion of having discovered a New
World.

A curious confirmation of the opinion of Columbus has just been
discovered (1894) in the Florence Library, by Dr. Wieser, of Innsbruck.
It is the actual copy of a map by the Great Admiral, drawn roughly in a
letter written from Jamaica, July, 1503. It shows that his belief as to
the part of the world reached in his voyages was that it was the east
coast of Asia.

The chief discovery made by Columbus in his first voyage was the great
island of Cuba, which he imagined to be part of a continent. Some of the
Spaniards went inland for sixty miles and reported that they had reached
a village of more than a thousand inhabitants, and that the corn used
for food was called _maize_--probably the first instance of Europeans
using a term which was afterward to become as familiar as "wheat" or
"barley." The natives told Columbus that their gold ornaments came from
_Cubakan_, meaning the interior of Cuba; but he, on hearing the syllable
_kan_, immediately thought of the "Khan" mentioned by Marco Polo, and
therefore imagined that "Cathay" (the China of that famous traveler) was
close at hand. The simple-minded Cubans were amazed that the Spaniards
had such a love for gold, and pointed eastward to another island, which
they called _Hayti_, saying it was more plentiful there than in Cuba.
Thus Columbus discovered the second in size of all the West Indian
islands, Cuba being the first; he, after landing on it, called it
"Hispaniola," or Little Spain. Hayti in a few years became the
headquarters of the Spanish establishments in the New World, after its
capital, San Domingo, had been built by Bartholomew Columbus. It was in
this island that the Spaniards saw the first of the "caziques," or
native princes, afterward so familiar during the conquest of Mexico; he
was carried on the shoulders of four men, and courteously presented
Columbus with some plates of gold. In a letter to the monarchs of Spain
the admiral thus refers to the natives of Hayti:

The people are so affectionate, so tractable, and so peaceable that
I swear to your Highnesses there is not a better race of men, nor a