This is a small island and its folk simple.

They are not Negroes, but the skin of the Indian is darker than ours, and that of Cipango and Cathay is yellow.

As for clothing, in all warm lands the simpler folk wear little.

But as for magicians, there may be magicians among them as there are among all peoples, but it is falseness and absurdity to speak of all as magicians! Nonsense and cowardice! The man who cried that goes not ashore to-day!" Not Great India before us nor Golden Cipango! But it was land--land--it was solid, there were folk! How long had flowed the sea around us, for this was the twelfth of October, five weeks since Gomera and above two months since Palos had sunk away and we had heard the last faint bell of La Rabida! And there had been strong doubt if ever we should see again a white beach, or a tree, or a kindly fire ashore, or any men but those of our three ships, or ever another woman or a child.

But land--land! Here was land and green woods and crowds of strange folk.