CHAPTER V.
PARLEY TELLS HOW COLUMBUS DISCOVERS THE CONTINENT OF AMERICA.
Columbus, having been furnished with six vessels of no great burden, departed on his third voyage.

He touched at the Canaries and at the Cape de Verd islands; from the former he despatched three ships with a supply of provisions for the colony of Hispaniola; with the other three he continued his voyage to the south.
Nothing remarkable occurred till they were within five degrees of the line; then they were becalmed, and the heat became so excessive, that the wine casks burst and their provisions were spoiled.
The Spaniards, who had never ventured so far to the south, were afraid the ships would take fire, but they were relieved in some measure from their fear by a seasonable fall of rain.
This, however, though so heavy and incessant that the men could hardly keep the deck, did not greatly mitigate the heat, and Columbus was at last constrained to yield to the importunities of his crew, and to alter his course to the north-west, in order to reach some of the Caribbee islands, where he might refit and be supplied with provisions.
On the 1st of August, 1498, the man stationed at the round-top surprised them with the joyful cry of "Land!" They stood towards it, and discovered a considerable island, which the admiral called Trinidad, a name it still retains, and near it the mouth of a river, rolling towards the ocean such a vast body of water, and rushing into it with such impetuous force, that when it meets the tide, which on that coast rises to an uncommon height, their meeting occasions an extraordinary and dangerous swell of the waves.
In this conflict, the irresistable torrent of the river so far prevails, that it freshens the ocean many leagues with its flood.
Columbus, before he could perceive the danger, was entangled among these adverse currents and tempestuous waves; and it was with the utmost difficulty that he escaped through a narrow strait, which appeared so tremendous, that he called it "The Dragon's Mouth." As soon as his consternation permitted him to reflect on an appearance so extraordinary, he justly concluded that the land must be a part of some mighty continent, and not of an island, because all the springs that could rise, and all the rain that could fall on an island, could never, as he calculated, supply water enough to feed so prodigiously broad and deep a river; and he was right, the river was the Oronoko.
Filled with this idea, he stood to the west, along the coast of those provinces which are now known by the name of Paria and Cumana.

He landed in several places, and found the people to resemble those of Hispaniola in their appearance and manner of life.
They wore as ornaments small plates of gold and pearls of considerable value, which they willingly exchanged for European toys.

They seemed to possess greater courage and better understandings than the inhabitants of the islands.
The country produced four-footed animals of several kinds, as well as a great variety of fowls and fruits.
The admiral was so much delighted with its beauty and fertility, that, with the warm enthusiasm of a discoverer, he imagined it to be the Paradise described in Scripture.
Thus Columbus had the glory of discovering the new world, and of conducting the Spaniards to that vast continent which has been the seat of their empire and the source of their treasure, in that quarter of the globe.

The shattered condition of his ships and the scarcity of provisions, made it now necessary to bear away for Hispaniola, where he arrived wasted to an extreme degree with fatigue and sickness.
Many revolutions had happened in that country during his absence, which had lasted more than two years.
His brother, whom he had left in command, had, in compliance with advice which he had given him before his departure, removed the colony from Isabella to a more commodious station on the opposite side of the island, and laid the foundation of St.Domingo, which long continued to be the most considerable town in the new world.
Such was the cruelty and oppression with which the Spaniards treated the Indians, and so intolerable the burden imposed upon them, that they at last took arms against their oppressors; but these insurrections were not formidable.