e on shore,
hard by this village, felling wood for it and using also the timbers
of the _Santa Maria_. We would mount there her two guns and provide an
arsenal with powder, shot, harquebuses and bows. Build a fort and call
it La Navidad, because of Christmas day when was the wreck. It should
have a garrison of certainly thirty men, a man for each year of Our
Lord's life when He began his mission. So many placed in Hispaniola
would much lighten the _Nina_, which indeed must be lightened in order
with safety to recross Ocean-Sea. For yes, we would go back to Palos!
Go, and come again with many and better ships, with hidalgos and
missionary priests, and very many men! In the meantime so many should
stay at La Navidad.

"In less than a year--much less, I promise it--I the Admiral will be
here again at La Navidad, when will come happy greeting between brothers
in the greatest service of our own or many ages! Sea and land, God will
keep us so long as we are His!"

All loved Christopherus Columbus that day. None was to be forced to
stay at La Navidad. It was easy to gain thirty; in the end there tarried
thirty-eight.

The building of the fort became a pleasurable enterprise. We broke
up with singing the Santa Maria, and with her bones built the walls.
Guacanagari and his people helped. All was hurried. The Admiral and
Viceroy, now that his mind was made up, would depart as soon as might
be.

We built La Navidad where it might view the sea, upon a hillside above
a brown river sliding out to ocean. Beyond the stream, in the groves, a
quarter-league away, stood the hundred huts of Guarico. We built a tower
and storehouse and wall of wood and we digged around all some kind of
moat, and mounted three lombards. All that we could lift from the Santa
Maria and what the _Nina_ could spare us of arms, conveniences and food
went into our arsenal and storehouse. We had a bubbling spring within
the enclosure. When all was done the tower of La Navidad, though an
infant beside towers of Europe, might suffice for the first here of its
brood. It was done in a week from that shipwreck.

Who was to be left at La Navidad? Leave was given to volunteer and the
mariners' list was soon made up, good men and not so good. From the poop
there volunteered Pedro Gutierrez and Roderigo de Escobedo. The Admiral
did not block their wish, but he gave the command not to Escobedo who
wished it, but to Diego de Arana whom he named to stay, having persuaded