e
another: These men are gods; they have come from Heaven to see us. And
then, they, too, fell on the ground and worshiped these men from Heaven,
as they supposed Columbus and his sailors to be.

And when they found that the men from Heaven did not offer to hurt them,
they came nearer; and the man in the crimson cloak gave them beads and
pieces of bright cloth and other beautiful things they had never seen
before. And this made them feel all the more certain that these men
who had come to see them in the canoes with wings must really be from
Heaven. So they brought them fruits and flowers and feathers and birds
as presents; and both parties, the men with clothes and the men without
clothes, got on very well together.

But Columbus, as we know, had come across the water for one especial
reason. He was to find Cathay, and he was to find it so that he could
carry back to Spain the gold and jewels and spices of Cathay. The first
thing, therefore, that he tried to find out from the people of the
island--whom he called "Indians," because he thought he had come to a
part of the coast of India was where Cathay might be.

Of course they did not understand him. Even Louis, the interpreter, who
knew a dozen languages and who tried them all, could not make out what
these "Indians" said. But from their signs and actions and from the
sound of the words they spoke, Columbus understood that Cathay was off
somewhere to the southwest, and that the gold he was bound to find came
from there. The "Indians" had little bits of gold hanging in their ears
and noses. So Columbus supposed that among the finer people he hoped
soon to meet in the southwest, he should find great quantities of the
yellow metal. He was delighted. Success, he felt, was not far off. Japan
was near, China was near, India was near. Of this he was certain; and
even until he died Columbus did not have any idea that he had found a
new world--such as America really was. He was sure that he had simply
landed upon the eastern coasts of Asia and that he had found what he set
out to discover--the nearest route to the Indies.

The next day Columbus pulled up his anchors, and having seized and
carried off to his ships some of the poor natives who had welcomed him
so gladly, he commenced a cruise among the islands of the group he had
discovered.

Day after day he sailed among these beautiful tropic islands, and of
them and of the people who lived upon them he wrote to the king