a Navidad and Guarico, for though the
Admiral had left us a store of food we got from them fruit and maize
and cassava. They were all friendly again, for the fourteen withheld
themselves from excess. Nor did we quarrel among ourselves and show them
European weakness.

Guacanagari remained a big, easy, somewhat slothful, friendly barbarian,
a child in much, but brave enough when roused and not without common
sense. He had an itch for marvels, loved to hear tales of our world that
for all one could say remained to them witchcraft and cloudland, world
above their world! What could they, who had no great beasts, make of
tales of horsemen? What could their huts know of palace and tower and
cathedral, their swimmers of stone bridges, their canoes of a thousand
ships greater far than the_ Santa Maria_ and the _Nina_? What could
Guarico know of Seville? In some slight wise they practiced barter,
but huge markets and fairs to which traveled from all quarters and afar
merchants and buyers went with the tales of horsemen. And so with a
thousand things! We were the waving oak talking to the acorn.

But there were among this folk two or three ready for knowledge. Guarin
was a learning soul. He foregathered with the physician Juan Lepe, and
many a talk they had, like a master and pupil, in some corner of La
Navidad, or under a palm-thatched roof, or, when the rain held, by river
or sounding sea. He had mind and moral sense, though not the European
mind at best, nor the European moral sense at highest. But he was well
begun. And he had beauty of form and countenance and an eager, deep eye.
Juan Lepe loved him.

It was June. Guacanagari came to La Navidad, and his brown face was as
serious as a tragedy. "Caonabo?" asked Diego de Arana.

A fortnight before this the cacique, at Arana's desire, had sent three
Indians in a canoe up the river, the object news if possible of that ten
who had departed in that direction. Now the Indians were back. They
had gone a long way until the high mountains were just before them, and
there they heard news from the last folk who might be called Guarico
and the first folk who might be called Maguana. The mighty strangers had
gone on up into the mountains and Caonabo had put them to death.

"To death!"

It appeared that they had seized women and had beaten men whom they
thought had gold which they would not give. They were madmen, Escobedo
and Gutierrez and all with them!

Guacanagari said that Caon