he place, and it was considered by the
superstitious mariners as under some baneful influence. The situation
was low and unhealthy, and not capable of improvement; Columbus
therefore determined to remove the settlement.

With this view he made choice of a situation more healthy and commodious
than that of Navidad, and having ordered the troops and the various
persons to be employed in the colony to be immediately disembarked,
together with the stores, ammunition, and all the cattle and live-stock,
he traced out the plan of a town in a large plain near a spacious bay;
and obliging every person to put his hand to the work, the houses were
soon so far advanced as to afford them shelter, and forts were
constructed for their defence.

This rising city, the first that Europeans founded in the new world, he
named Isabella, in honour of his patroness the Queen of Castile.

As long as the Indians had any prospect that their sufferings might
terminate by the voluntary departure of the invaders, they submitted in
silence, and dissembled their sorrow; but now that the Spaniards had
built a town--now that they had dug up the ground and planted it with
corn--it became apparent that they came not to visit the country, but to
settle in it.

They were themselves naturally so abstemious and their wants so few,
that they were easily satisfied with the fruits of the island, which,
with a handful of maize or a little of the insipid bread made of the
cassava root, were sufficient for their support.

But it was with difficulty they could afford subsistence for the new
guests. The Spaniards, though considered an abstemious people, appeared
to them excessively voracious. One Spaniard consumed as much as several
Indians; this keenness of appetite appeared so insatiable, that they
supposed the Spaniards had left their own country because it did not
produce enough to gratify their immoderate appetites, and had come among
them in quest of nourishment.

Columbus having taken all the steps which he thought necessary to
ensure the prosperity of his new colony, entrusted the command of the
military force to Margaritta, and set sail with three vessels to extend
his discoveries; but, after a long and tedious voyage, in which he
endured every hardship, the most important discovery he made was the
island of Jamaica.

Having been absent much longer than he had expected, he returned to his
new settlement, but the colonists had become refractory and