The Admiral stared. I saw the enthusiasm
rise in his face. "Did I not write and say to the
Sovereigns and to Rome that in the Name of the Holy
Trinity, I would now again seek out and find? There!
Look you! It is a sign! Trinidad--we will name it
Trinidad."
The next morning we came to Trinidad, and the palms
trooped to the water edge, and we saw sparkling streams,
and from the heights above the sea curls of smoke from
hidden huts. We coasted, seeking anchorage, and at last
came into a clear, small harbor, and landing, filled our water
casks. We knew the country was inhabited for we saw the
smokes, but no canoes came about us, and though we met
with footprints upon the sand the men who made them
never returned. We weighed anchor and sailed on along the
southern coast, and now to the south of us, across not many
leagues of blue water, we made out a low shore. Its ends
were lost in haze, but we esteemed it an island, and he
named it Holy Island. It was not island, as now we know;
but we did not know it then. How dreamlike is all our
finding, and how halfway only to great truths! Cuba we
thought was the continent, and the shore that was continent,
we called "island."
Now we came to a long southward running tongue of
Trinidad. Point Arenal, he named it. A corresponding
tongue of that low Holy Island reached out toward it, and
between the two flowed an azure strait.
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