None was to
be forced to stay at La Navidad. It was easy to gain
thirty; in the end there tarried thirty-eight.
The building of the fort became a pleasurable enterprise.
We broke up with singing the Santa Maria, and
with her bones built the walls. Guacanagari and his people
helped. All was hurried. The Admiral and Viceroy, now
that his mind was made up, would depart as soon as might
be.
We built La Navidad where it might view the sea, upon
a hillside above a brown river sliding out to ocean. Beyond
the stream, in the groves, a quarter-league away, stood the
hundred huts of Guarico. We built a tower and storehouse
and wall of wood and we digged around all some kind
of moat, and mounted three lombards. All that we could
lift from the Santa Maria and what the _Nina_ could spare
us of arms, conveniences and food went into our arsenal
and storehouse. We had a bubbling spring within the enclosure.
When all was done the tower of La Navidad,
though an infant beside towers of Europe, might suffice
for the first here of its brood. It was done in a week from
that shipwreck.
Who was to be left at La Navidad? Leave was given to
volunteer and the mariners' list was soon made up, good
men and not so good. From the poop there volunteered
Pedro Gutierrez and Roderigo de Escobedo. The Admiral
did not block their wish, but he gave the command not to
Escobedo who wished it, but to Diego de Arana whom
he named to stay, having persuaded him who would rather
have returned with the _Nina_.
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