Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 11 (Latin American).djvu/42

18 extent that their chiefs, or caciques, with power in some cases hereditary, were the heads of veritable nations—all of Jamaica was under one ruler, Hispaniola had five, while the Ciboney of Cuba and the Borinqueiio of Porto Rico were powerful peoples. The Spanish conquerors of the islands succeeded early in virtually annihilating these nations, but their handiwork and the traditions which they have left still command respect.

Even before Columbus's day the mythical Island of Antilia was marked on the maps out in the Atlantic west; and when the archipelago which Columbus first discovered came to be known as an archipelago, the name, in the plural form Antilles, was not unnaturally applied to it. Probably, too. It was with more than the glamour of discovery—enchanting as that must have been—that Columbus first looked upon the newfound lands. From time immemorial European imagination had been haunted by legends of Isles of the Gods, Isles of the Happy Dead—Fortunate Isles, In some weird sense, lying far out In the enchanted seas; and it is no marvel If Columbus should have felt himself the finder of this blessed realm. In one of his letters to Ferdinand and Isabella he wrote: "This country excels all others as far as the day surpasses the night in splendour; the natives love their neighbours as themselves; their conversation is the sweetest imaginable; their faces always smiling; and so gentle and so affectionate are they that I swear to your highness there is not a better people In the world."

Something of the same idealization, coupled with a happy ignorance, underlay, no doubt, the statement which Columbus makes in his letters to Ferdinand's officials, Gabriel Sanchez and Luis de Santangel, describing his first voyage: "They are not acquainted with any kind of worship and are not