Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/187

163 SECOND VOYAGE. 163 manners. ^ Most of them had relatives or friends chapter on board. They thronged immediately to the — shore, to assure themselves with their own eyes of the truth of their return. When they beheld their faces once more, and saw them accompanied by the numerous evidences which they brought back of the success of the expedition, they burst forth in acclamations of joy and gratulation. They await- ed the landing of Columbus, when the whole pop- ulation of the place accompanied him and his crew to the principal church, where solemn thanksgivings were oifered up for their return ; while every bell in the village sent forth a joyous peal in honor of the glorious event. The admiral was too desirous of presenting himself before the sovereigns, to pro- tract his stay long at Palos. He took with him on his journey specimens of the multifarious pro- ducts of the newly discovered regions. He was accompanied by several of the native islanders, arrayed in their simple barbaric costume, and de- corated, as he passed through the principal cities, with collars, bracelets, and other ornaments of gold, rudely fashioned ; he exhibited also considerable quantities of the same metal in dust, or in crude masses, ^° numerous vegetable exotics, possessed of aromatic or medicinal virtue, and several kinds of of commencing a voyage on that lump of gold, of sufficient magni- ominous day. tude to be fashioned into a vessel 9 Primer Viage de Colon, Let. 2. for containing the host; "thus," 10 Muiioz, Hist, del Nuevo-Mun- says Salazar de Mendoza, " con- do, lib. 4, sec. 14. — Fernando verting the Urst fruits of the new Colon, Hist, del Almirante, cap. dominions to pious uses." Monar- 41. quia, pp. 351, 352. Among other specimens, was a