Hurrah for the great Admiral! And when the naked and astonished people of the island saw all this--the canoes with wings, as they called the ships, the richly-dressed men with white and bearded faces, the flags and swords, and the people kneeling about this grand-looking old man in the crimson cloak--they said to one another: These men are gods; they have come from Heaven to see us.

And then, they, too, fell on the ground and worshiped these men from Heaven, as they supposed Columbus and his sailors to be.
And when they found that the men from Heaven did not offer to hurt them, they came nearer; and the man in the crimson cloak gave them beads and pieces of bright cloth and other beautiful things they had never seen before.

And this made them feel all the more certain that these men who had come to see them in the canoes with wings must really be from Heaven.

So they brought them fruits and flowers and feathers and birds as presents; and both parties, the men with clothes and the men without clothes, got on very well together.
But Columbus, as we know, had come across the water for one especial reason.

He was to find Cathay, and he was to find it so that he could carry back to Spain the gold and jewels and spices of Cathay.