FOREST endless and splendid! We white men often saw no path, but the
red-brown men saw it. It ran level, it climbed, it descended; then began
the three again. It was lost, it was found. They said, “Here path!” But
we had to serpent through thickets, or make way on edge of dizzy crag,
or find footing through morass. We came to great stretches of reeds
and yielding grass, giving with every step into water. It was to toil
through this under hot sun, with stinging clouds of insects. But when
they were left behind we might step into a grove of the gods, such
firmness, such pleasantness, such shady going or happy resting under
trees that dropped fruit.
We met no great forest beasts. There seemed to be none in this part
of Asia. And yet Luis and I had read of great beasts. Dogs of no
considerable size were the largest four-footed things we had come upon
from San Salvador to Cuba. There were what they called _utias_, like a
rabbit, much used for food, and twice we had seen an animal the size of
a fox hanging from a bough by its tail.
If the beasts were few the birds were many. To see the parrots great
and small and gorgeously colored, to see those small, small birds like
tossed jewels that never sang but hummed like a bee, to hear a gray bird
sing clear and loud and sweet every strain that sang other birds, was to
see and hear most joyous things. Lizards were innumerable; at edge of a
marsh we met with tortoises; once we passed coiled around a tree a great
serpent. It looked at us with beady eyes, but the Indians said it would
not harm a man. A thousand, thousand butterflies spread their painted
fans.
The trees! so huge of girth and height and wherever was room so
spreading, so rich of grain, so full, I knew, of strange virtues! We
found one that I thought was cinnamon, and broke twigs and bark and put
in our great pouch for the Admiral. Only time might tell the wealth of
this green multitude. I thought, “Here is gold, if we would wait for
it!” Fruit trees sprang by our path. We had with us some provision of
biscuit and dried meat, and we never lacked golden or purple delectable
orbs. We found the palm that bears the great nut, giving alike meat and
milk.
By now Luis Torres and I had no little of Diego Colon’s tongue and he
had Spanish enough to understand the simplest statements and orders.
Ferdandina tongue was not quite Cuba tongue, but it was like enough to
furnish sea room. We asked this, we asked that. No! No one had ever come
to the end of their country. When one town was left behind, at last you
came to another town. One by one, were they bigger, better towns? They
seemed to say that they were, but here was always, I thought, doubtful
understanding. But no one had ever walked around their country--they
seemed to laugh at the notion--land that way, always land! On the other
hand, there was sea yonder--like sea here. They pointed south. Not so
far there! “It must be,” said Luis, “that Cuba is narrow, though without
end westwardly. A great point or tongue of Asia?”
The Cubans were strong young men and not unintelligent. “Chiefs?”
Yes, they had chiefs, they called them _caciques_. Some of them were
fighters, they and their people. Not fighters like Caribs! Whereupon the
speaker rose--we were resting under a tree--and facing south, used for
gesture a strong shudder and a movement as if to flee.
South--south--always they pointed south! We were going south--inland.
Would we come to Caribs? But no. Caribs seemed not to be in Cuba, but
beyond sea, in islands.
Luis and I made progress in language and knowledge. Roderigo Jerez,
a simple man, slept or tried the many kinds of fruit, or teased the
slender, green-flame lizards.
We slept this night high on the mountainside, on soft grass near a fall
of water. The Indians showed no fear of attack from man or beast. They
could make fire in a most ingenious fashion, setting stick against
larger stick and turning the first with such skill, vigor and
persistence that presently arose heat, a spark, fire. But they seemed
to need or wish no watch fire. They lay, naked and careless,
innocent--fearless, as though the whole land were their castle. Luis
tried to find out how they felt about dangers. We pieced together. “None
here! And the Great Lizard takes care!” That was the Cuban. Diego Colon
said, “The Great Turtle takes care!”
Luis Torres laughed. “Fray Ignatio should hear that!”
“It is on the road,” I said and went to sleep.
The second day’s going proved less difficult than the first. Less
difficult means difficult enough! And as yet we had met no one nor
anything that remotely favored golden-roofed Cipango, or famous, rich
Quinsai, or Zaiton of the marble bridges. Jerez climbed a tall tree
and coming down reported forest and mountain, and naught else. Our
companions watched with interest his climbing. “Do you go up trees in
heaven?”
This morning we had bathed in a pool below the little waterfall. Diego
Colon by now was used to us so, but the Cuba men displayed excitement.
They had not yet in mind separated us from our clothes. Now we were
separated and were found in all our members like them, only the color
differing. Color and the short beards of Luis Torres and Juan Lepe. They
wished to touch and examine our clothes lying upon the bank, but here
Diego Colon interfered. They were full of magic. Something terrible
might happen! When Luis and I came forth from water and dried ourselves
with handfuls of the warm grass, they asked: “Do they do so in heaven?”
The stronger, more intelligent of the two, added, “It is not so
different!”
I said to Luis as we took path after breakfast, “It is borne in upon
me that only from ourselves, Admiral to ship boy, can we keep up this
heaven ballad! Clothes, beads and hawk bells, cannon, harquebus,
trumpet and banner, ship and sails, royal letters and blessing of the
Pope--nothing will do it long unless we do it ourselves!”
“Agreed!” quoth Luis. “But gods and angels are beginning to slip and
slide, back there by the ships! We have the less temptation here.”
He began to speak of a sailor and a brown girl upon whom he had stumbled
in a close wood a little way from shore. She thought Tomaso Pasamonte
was a god wooing her and was half-frightened, half-fain. “And two hours
later I saw Don Pedro Gutierrez--”
“Ay,” said Juan Lepe. “The same story! The oldest that is!” And as at
the word our savages, who had been talking together, now at the next
resting place put forward their boldest, who with great reverence asked
if there were women in heaven.
Through most of this day we struggled with a difficult if fantastically
beautiful country. Where rock outcropped and in the sands of bright
rapid streams we looked for signs of that gold, so stressed as though
it were the only salvation! But the rocks were silent, and though in
the bed of a shrunken streamlet we found some glistening particles and
scraping them carefully together got a small spoonful to wrap in cloth
and bestow in our pouch of treasures, still were we not sure that it was
wholly gold. It might be. We worked for an hour for just this pinch.
Since yesterday morning our path had been perfectly solitary. Then
suddenly, when we were, we thought, six leagues at least from the ships,
the way turning and entering a small green dell, we came upon three
Indians seated resting, their backs to palm trees. We halted, they
raised their eyes. They stared, they rose in amazement at the sight of
those gods, Roderigo Jerez, Luis Torres and Juan Lepe. They stood like
statues with great eyes and parted lips. For us, coming silently upon
them, we had too our moment of astonishment.
They were three copper men, naked, fairly tall and well to look at. But
each had between his lips what seemed a brown stick, burning at the far
end, dropping a light ash and sending up a thin cloud of odorous smoke.
These burning sticks they dropped as they rose. They had seemed so
silent, so contented, so happy, sitting there with backs to trees,
a firebrand in each mouth, I felt a love for them! Luis thought the
lighted sticks some rite of their religion, but after a while when we
came to examine them, we found them not true stick, but some large,
thickish brown leaf tightly twisted and pressed together and having a
pungent, not unpleasing odor. We crumbled one in our hands and tasted
it. The taste was also pungent, strange, but one might grow to like it.
They called the stick tobacco, and said they always used it thus with
fire, drinking in the smoke and puffing it out again as they showed us
through the nostrils. We thought it a great curiosity, and so it was!
But to them we were unearthly beings. The men from the sea told of
us, then as it were introduced Diego Colon, who spoke proudly with
appropriate gesture, loving always his part of herald Mercury--or
rather of herald Mercury’s herald--not assuming to be god himself, but
cherishing the divine efflux and the importance it rayed upon him!
The three Indians quivered with a sense of the great adventure! Their
town was yonder. They themselves had been on the path to such and such a
place, but now would they turn and go with us, and when we went again
to the sea they, if it were permitted, would accompany us and view for
themselves our amazing canoes! All this to our companion. They backed
with great deference from us.
We went with these Indians to their town, evidently the town which we
sought. And indeed it was larger, fitter, a more ordered community than
any we had met this side Ocean-Sea, though far, far from travelers’
tales of Orient cities! It was set under trees, palm trees and others,
by the side of a clear river. The huts were larger than those by the
sea, and set not at random but in rows with a great trodden square
in the middle. From town to river where they fished and where, under
overhanging palms, we found many Canoes, ran a way wider than a path,
much like a narrow road. But there were no wheeled vehicles nor draught
animals. We were to find that in all these lands they on occasion
carried their caciques or the sick or hurt in litters or palanquins
borne on men’s shoulders. But for carrying, grinding, drawing, they knew
naught of the wheel. It seemed strange that any part of Asia should not
know!
In this town we found the cacique, and with him a _butio_ or priest.
Once, too, I thought, our king and church were undeveloped like these.
We were looking in these lands upon the bud which elsewhere we knew in
the flower. That to Juan Lepe seemed the difference between them and us.
The people swarmed out upon us. When the first admiration was somewhat
over, when Diego Colon and the two seaside men and the Cubans of the
burning sticks had made explanation, we were swept with them into their
public square and to a hut much larger than common where we found a
stately Indian, the cacique, and an ancient wrinkled man, the _butio_.
These met us with their own assumption of something like godship. They
had no lack of manner, and Luis and I had the Castilian to draw
upon. Then came presents and Diego Colon interpreting. But as for the
Admiral’s letter, though I showed it, it was not understood.
It was gazed upon and touched, considered a heavenly rarity like the
hawk bells we gave them, but not read nor tried to be read. The writing
upon it was the natural veining of some most strange leaf that grew in
heaven, or it was the pattern miraculously woven by a miraculous workman
with thread miraculously finer than their cotton! It was strange
that they should have no notion at all--not even their chieftains and
priests--of writing! Any part of Asia, however withdrawn, surely should
have tradition there, if not practice!
In this hut or lodge, doored but not windowed, we found a kind of table
and seats fashioned from blocks of some dark wood rudely carved and
polished. The cacique would have us seated, sat himself beside us, the
_butio_ at his hand.
There seemed no especial warrior class. We noted that, it being one of
the things it was ever in order to note. No particular band of fighting
men stood about that block of polished wood, that was essentially throne
or chair of state. The village owned slender, bone or flint-headed
lances, but these rested idly in corners. Upon occasion all or any might
use them, but there was no evidence that those occasions came often.
There was no body of troops, nor armor, no shields, no crossbows, no
swords. They had knives, rudely made of some hard stone, but it seemed
that they were made for hunting and felling and dividing. No clothing
hid from us any frame. The cacique had about his middle a girdle of
wrought cotton with worked ends and some of the women wore as slight a
dress, but that was all. They were formed well, all of them, lithe and
slender, not lacking either in sinew and muscle, but it was sinew
and muscle of the free, graceful, wild world, not brawn of bowman and
pikeman and swordman and knight with his heavy lance. In something they
might be like the Moor when one saw him naked, but the Moor, too, was
perfected in arms, and so they were not like.
We did not know as yet if ever there were winter in this land. It
seemed perpetual, serene and perfect summer. Behind these huts ran small
gardens wherein were set melons and a large pepper of which we grew
fond, and a nourishing root, and other plants. But the soil was rich,
rich, and they loosened and furrowed it with a sharpened stick. There
were no great forest beasts to set them sternly hunting. What then could
give them toil? Not gathering the always falling fruit; not cutting from
the trees and drying the calabashes, great and small, that they used for
all manner of receptacle; not drawing out with a line of some stouter
fiber than cotton and with a hook of bone or thorn the painted fish from
their crystal water! To fell trees for canoes, to hollow the canoe, was
labor, as was the building of their huts, but divided among so many it
became light labor. In those days we saw no Indian figure bowed with
toil, and when it came it was not the Indian who imposed it.
But they swam, they rowed their canoes, they hunted in their not arduous
fashion, they roved afar in their country at peace, and they danced.
That last was their fair, their games, their tourney, their pilgrimage,
their processions to church, their attendance at mass, their expression
of anything else that they felt altogether and at once! It was like
children’s play, renewed forever, and forever with zest. But they
did not treat it as play. We had been showed dances in Concepcion and
Isabella, but here in Cuba, in this inland town, Jerez and Luis and I
were given to see a great and formal dance, arranged all in honor of us,
gods descended for our own reasons to mix with men! They danced in the
square, but first they made us a feast with _hutias_ and cassava
and fish and fruit and a drink not unlike mead, exhilarating but not
bestowing drunkenness. Grapes were all over these lands, purple clusters
hanging high and low, but they knew not wine.
Men and women danced, now in separate bands, now mingled together.
Decorum was kept. We afterwards knew that it had been a religious dance.
They had war dances, hunting dances, dances at the planting of their
corn, ghost dances and others. This now was a thing to watch, like a
beautiful masque. They were very graceful, very supple; they had their
own dignity.
We learned much in the three days we spent in this town. Men and women
for instance! That nakedness of the body, that free and public mingling,
going about work and adventure and play together, worked, thought Juan
Lepe no harm. Later on in this vast adventure of a new world, some of
our churchmen were given to asserting that they lived like animals,
though the animals also are there slandered! The women were free and
complaisant; there were many children about. But matings, I thought,
occurred only of free and mutual desire, and not more frequently than in
other countries. The women were not without modesty, nor the men without
a pale chivalry. At first I thought constraint or rule did not enter in,
but after a talk with their priest through Diego Colon, I gathered that
there prevailed tribe and kinship restraints. Later we were to find that
a great network of “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not” ran through their
total society, wherever or to what members it might extend. Common good,
or what was supposed to be common good, was the master here as it is
everywhere! The women worked the gardens, the men hunted; both men and
women fished. Women might be caciques. There were women caciques, they
said, farther on in their land. And it seemed to us that name and family
were counted from the mother’s side.
The Admiral had solemnly laid it upon us to discover the polity of
this new world. If they held fief from fief, then at last we must come
through however many overlords to the seigneur of them all, Grand Khan
or Emperor. We applied ourselves to cacique and butio, but we found no
Grand Seigneur. There were other caciques. When the Caribs descended
they banded together. They had dimly, we thought, the idea of a
war-lord. But it ended there, when the war ended. Tribute: He found
they had no idea of tribute. Cotton grew everywhere! Cotton, cassava,
calabashes, all things! When they visited a cacique they took him gifts,
and at parting he gave them gifts. That was all.
Gold? They knew of it. When they found a bit they kept it for ornament.
The cacique possessed a piece the size of a ducat, suspended by a string
of cotton. It had been given to him by a cacique who lived on the great
water. Perhaps he took it from the Caribs. But it was in the mountains,
too. He indicated the heights beyond. Sometimes they scraped it from
sand under the stream. He seemed indifferent to it. But Diego Colon,
coming in, said that it was much prized in heaven, being used for high
magic, and that we would give heavenly gifts for it. Resulted from that
the production in an hour of every shining flake and grain and button
piece the village owned. We carried from this place to the Admiral a
small gourd filled with gold. But it was not greatly plentiful; that was
evident to any thinking man! But we had so many who were not thinking
men. And the Admiral had to appease with his reports gold-thirsty great
folk in Spain.
We spent three days in this village and they were days for gods and
Indians of happy wonder and learning. They would have us describe
heaven. Luis and I told them of Europe. We pointed to the east. They
said that they knew that heaven rested there upon the great water.
The town of the sun was over there. Had we seen the sun’s town? Was it
beside us in heaven, in “Europe”? The sun went down under the mountains,
and there he found a river and his canoe. He rowed all night until he
came to his town. Then he ate cassava cakes and rested, while the green
and gold and red Lizard [These were “Lizard” folk. They had a Lizard
painted on a great post by the cacique’s house.] went ahead to say that
he was coming. Then he rose, right out of the great water, and there was
day again! But we must know about the sun’s town; we, the gods!
Luis and I could have stayed long while and disentangled this place and
loved the doing it.
But it was to return to the Admiral and the waiting ships.
The three tobacco men would go with us to see wonders, so we returned
nine in number along the path. Before we set out we saw that a storm
threatened. All six Indians were loth to depart until it was over, and
the cacique would have kept us. But Luis and I did not know how long the
bad weather might hold and we must get to the ships. It was Jerez who
told them boastfully that gods did not fear storms,--specimen of that
Spanish folly of ours that worked harm and harm again!
We traveled until afternoon agreeably enough, then with great swiftness
the clouds climbed and thickened. Sun went out, air grew dark. The
Indians behind us on the path, that was so narrow that we must tread one
after the other, spoke among themselves, then Diego Colon pushed through
marvelously huge, rich fern to Luis and me. “They say, ‘will not the
gods tell the clouds to go away?’” But doubt like a gnome sat in the
youth’s eye. We had had bad weather off Isabella, and the gods had had
to wait for the sun like others. By now Diego Colon had seen many and
strange miracles, but he had likewise found limitations, quite numerous
and decisive limitations! He thought that here was one, and I explained
to him that he thought correctly. Europeans could do many things but
this was not among them. Luis and I watched him tell the Cubans that he,
Diego Colon, had never said that we three were among the highest gods.
Even the great, white-headed, chief god yonder in the winged canoe was
said to be less than some other gods in heaven which we called Europe,
and over all was a High God who could do everything, scatter clouds,
stop thunder or send thunder, everything! Had we brought our butio with
us he might perhaps have made great magic and helped things. As it was,
we must take luck. That seeming rational to the Indians, we proceeded,
our glory something diminished, but still sufficient.
The storm climbed and thickened and evidently was to become a fury. Wind
began to whistle, trees to bend, lightnings to play, thunder to sound.
It grew. We stood in blazing light, thunder almost burst our ears, a
tree was riven a bow-shot away. Great warm rain began to fall. We could
hardly stand against the wind. We were going under mountainside with a
splashing stream below us. Diego Colon shouted, as he must to get above
wind and thunder. “Hurry! hurry! They know place.” All began to run.
After a battle to make way at all, we came to a slope of loose, small
stones and vine and fern. This we climbed, passed behind a jagged mass
of rock, and found a cavern. A flash lit it for us, then another and
another. At mouth it might be twenty feet across, was deep and narrowed
like a funnel. Panting, we threw ourselves on the cave floor.
The storm prevailed through the rest of this day and far into the night.
“_Hurricane!_” said the Cubans. “Not great one, little one!” But we from
Spain thought it a great enough hurricane. The rain fell as though it
would make another flood and in much less than forty days. We must be
silent, for wind and thunder allowed no other choice. Streams of rain
came into the cavern, but we found ledges curtained by rock. We ate
cassava cake and drank from a runlet of water. The storm made almost
night, then actual night arrived. We curled ourselves up, hugging
ourselves for warmth, and went to sleep.
The third day from the town we came to the sea and the ships. All seemed
well. Our companions had felt the storm, had tales to tell of wrenched
anchors and the _Pinta’s_ boat beat almost to pieces, uprooted trees,
wind, lightning, thunder and rain. But they cut short their recital,
wishing to know what we had found.
Luis and I made report to the Admiral. He sat under a huge tree and
around gathered the Pinzons, Fray Ignatio, Diego de Arana, Roderigo
Sanchez and others. We related; they questioned, we answered; there was
discussion; the Admiral summed up.
But later I spoke to him alone. We were now on ship, making ready for
sailing. We would go eastward, around this point of Asia, since from
what all said it must be point, and see what was upon the other side.
“They all gesture south! They say ‘Babeque--Babeque! Bohio!’”
I asked him, “Why is it that these Indians here seem glad for us to go?”
He sighed impatiently, drawing one hand through the other, with him a
recurring gesture. “It is the women! Certain of our men--” I saw him
look at Gutierrez who passed.
“Tomaso Passamonte, too,” I said.
“Yes. And others. It is the old woe! Now they have only to kill a man!”
He arraigned short-sightedness. I said, “But still we are from heaven?”
“Still. But some of the gods--just five or six, say--have fearful ways!”
He laughed, sorrowfully and angrily. “And you think there is little
gold, and that we are very far from clothed and lettered Asia?”
“So far,” I answered, “that I see not why we call these brown, naked
folk Indians.”
“What else would you call them?”
“I do not know that.”
“Why, then, let us still call them Indians.” He drummed upon the rail
before him, then broke out, “Christ! I think we do esteem hard, present,
hand-held gold too much!”
“I say yes to that!”
He said, “We should hold to the joy of Discovery and great use
hereafter--mounting use!”
“Aye.”
“Here is virgin land, vast and beautiful, with a clime like heaven, and
room for a hundred colonies such as Greece and Rome sent out! Here is a
docile, unwarlike people ready to be industrious servitors and peasants,
for which we do give them salvation of their souls! It is all Spain’s,
the banner is planted, the names given! We are too impatient! We cannot
have it between dawn and sunset! But look into the future--there is
wealth beyond counting! No great amount of gold, but enough to show that
there is gold.”
I followed the working of his mind. It was to smile somewhat
sorrowfully, seeing his great difficulties. He was the born Discoverer
mightily loving Discovery, and watching the Beloved in her life through
time. But he had to serve Prince Have-it-now, in the city Greed. I said,
“Senor, do not put too much splendor in your journal for the King and
Queen and the Spanish merchants and the Church and all the chivalry that
the ended war releases! Or, if you prophesy, mark it prophecy. It is a
great trouble in the world that men do not know when one day is talked
of or when is meant great ranges of days! Otherwise you will have
all thirsty Spain sailing for Ophir and Golden Chersonesus, wealth
immediate, gilding Midas where he stands! If they find disappointment
they will not think of the future; they will smite you!”
I knew that he was writing in that book too ardently, and that he was
even now composing letters to great persons to be dispatched from what
Spanish port he should first enter, coming back east from west, over
Ocean-Sea, from Asia!
But he had long, long followed his own advice, stood by his own course.
The doing so had so served him that it was natural he should have
confidence. Now he said only, “I do the best I can! I have little sea
room. One Scylla and Charybdis? Nay, a whole brood of them!”
I could agree to that. I saw it coming up the ways that they would give
him less and less sea room. He went on, “Merchandise has to be made
attractive! The cook dresses the dish, the girl puts flowers in her
hair.... Yet, in the end the wares are mighty beyond description! The
dish is for Pope and King--the girl is a bride for a paladin!”
Again he was right afar and over the great span. But they would not see
in Spain, or not many would see, that the whole span must be taken. But
I was not one to chide him, seeing that I, too, saw afar, and they would
not see with me either in Spain.