hat had only vaguely heard that gods had descended. Forty leagues
across these forests is a long way. They had heard a rumor that the
cacique of Guarico liked the mighty strangers and Caonabo liked them
not, but as yet knew little more. The harbor, the land, the two rivers
pleased us. "Here we will build," quoth the Viceroy, "a city named
Isabella."

CHAPTER XXIX

CHRISTMASTIDE, a year from the sinking of the _Santa Maria_, came to
nigh two thousand Christian men dwelling in some manner of houses by
a river in a land that, so short time before, had never heard the
word "Christmas." Now, in Spain and elsewhere, men and women, hearing
Christmas bells, might wonder, "What are they doing--are they also
going to mass--those adventurers across the Sea of Darkness? Have they
converted the Indies? Are they moving happily in the golden, spicy
lands? Great marvel! Christ now is born there as here!"

Juan Lepe chanced to be walking in the cool of the evening with Don
Francisco de Las Casas, a sensible, strong man, not unread in the
philosophers. He spoke to me of his son, a young man whom he loved, who
would sooner or later come out to him to Hispaniola, if he, the elder,
stayed here. So soon as this we had begun to speak thus, "Come out to
Hispaniola." "Come out to Isabella in Hispaniola." What a strong wind is
life, leaping from continent to continent and crying, "Home wherever I
can breathe and move!" This young man was Bartolome, then at Salamanca,
at the University. Bartolome de Las Casas, whom Juan Lepe should live
to know and work with. But this evening I heard the father talk, as any
father of any promising son.

With us, too, was Don Juan Ponce de Leon, who had a story out of
Mandeville of a well by the city of Polombe in Prester John's country.
If you drank of the well, though you were dying you would never more
have sickness, and though you were white-bearded you would come young
again!

The palms waved above Isabella that was building behind the camp by the
river. It was beginning, it was planned out; the stone church, the stone
house of the Viceroy were already breast-high. A Spanish city building,
and the bells of Europe ringing.

Out sprang the noise of a brawl.--There was that in the Admiral that
would have when it could outward no less than inward magnificence.
He could go like a Spartan or Diogenes the Cynic, but when the chance
came--magnificence! With him from Spain traveled a Viceroy's household.
H