Page:Haiti- Her History and Her Detractors.djvu/30



Such were the first inhabitants of Haiti when, on August 3, 1492, Columbus left Palos. After a journey too well known to be repeated here, his three caravels anchored on the 6th of December, 1492, in a pretty bay in the northern part of Haiti. In honor of the saint whose feast the Catholic Church was celebrating that day, the place was called St. Nicholas. The beauty of the scenery, the lovely panorama which Columbus beheld on arriving, the song of the nightingale, the fish, everything reminded him of the country whence he started out to the conquest of the New World. Therefore he gave the name of Hispañola to the island he had just discovered; and believing that he was in Asia, he called the inhabitants "Indians." On those unfortunate people the arrival of the Spaniards was about to bring endless calamities. And the island up to that time so peaceful and quiet was to have no more tranquillity; the land was to be nothing else than an everlasting battlefield, where all kinds of horrors and atrocities would be perpetrated. Torrents of blood would irrigate its fertile soil and a whole race would disappear in order to satisfy the cupidity of the newcomers. On the 12th of December, in setting up the cross on the coast of Haiti, Columbus had no idea that