DRYING SISAL FIBER

After this open-air curing, the fiber is baled and exported, or is used in the manufacture of rope and twine in rope factories on the island.

Sisal, from which the rope is made, is grown in the immediate vicinity. It flourishes in these warm climates with little care (see, also, illustration, page 35).

Making sure that his men would do nothing to violate the confidence of the Indians, Columbus soon established trade with them, and they brought him cassava, fish, and birds. His youthful son, Fernando, took great interest in the barterings, the records tell.

Finally the food aboard and that supplemented by the near-by Indians gave out, and after the last ration of biscuit and wine had been issued the Admiral's faithful follower, Diego Méndez, started out through the jungle on a trading expedition which netted a scant fare, but enough to keep away starvation, even if not sufficient to appease hunger.

Columbus then called for volunteers to try for Haiti, some 200 miles away, in search of succor. All were silent but the gallant Méndez. He stepped into a small ship's boat and rowed away!

Then sickness and body ills brought despair and mutiny. The brothers Porras (Francisco, captain of the Santiago, and Diego, the accountant) led a revolt in which Juan Sánchez, the pilot Ledesma, Barba the gunner, and some fifty others joined.

Though so ill with gout that he could. not stand, Columbus endeavored to go out and quell the mutiny, his log tells us. But his adherents begged that the mutineers be permitted to go.

They took most of the scanty stores, the ten canoes and started for Haiti; but, cowards that they were, they gave up the trip after forcing the Indians who accompanied them to swim ashore.

HIS CUP OVERFLOWS

A caravel heaves into sight! Is it the long-looked-for relief sent by Méndez? Alas, no! Only a sorry jest by Ovanda, who sent out Escobar in the hope he would find Columbus dead, and, if not, to tell him there were no ships available to carry them to Spain.

Hearing that Porras and his mutineers were going about making enemies of the natives, Columbus sent the adelantado, Bartolomé, either to pacify or to conquer the deserters. Bartolomé took fifty loyal men and going against them captured the mutineers. Yet Columbus, with his usual clemency, granted pardon to all except the brothers Porras, whom he kept in chains.

The road system of the island is being constantly improved, and innumerable men, women, and children are seen along the way breaking rock under government contract for road repair. They seem happy and contented in this work, which to the American negro would, perhaps, seem a great hardship.

Finally, a full year after he had landed there, the eyes of the Admiral saw another sight-two caravels, one sent by the faithful Méndez, and the other by Ovando, who had repented his previous sorry attitude.

So it was, on June 28, 1504, after twelve months and four days of a wretched, stranded existence at Jamaica, Christopher Columbus sailed home again, never more to look upon the world he had discovered.

PICKING UP THE JOURNEY

Leaving St. Anns Bay, we come to Runaway Bay, appropriately named as the place where Sasi, the last redoubtable Spaniard to oppose the British, fled. He escaped in a canoe "and ended his days in the bosom of peace and Christianity, by retiring to a monastery in Spain."

Continuing westward, and enjoying to the utmost the wonderful and ever-changing sequence of great bays that seem duplicates of that of Naples, we finally pass Rose Hall, ideally located on a great hill

overlooking the sea and surrounded by one of the largest and, a century ago, one of the richest sugar estates in Jamaica. The Hall, which has a most interesting history all its own, was once considered the finest home in the island, but it is now crumbling into decay; yet the floors and trim of the great drawing room and grand stairway of solid mahogany remain as silent testimony to its colonial grandeur. The natives will tell you that one of its infamous mistresses, Ann Palmer, "killed three husbands, and the fourth killed she," whatever that may mean.

In this region one passes through many "Maroon towns." The term "Maroon," said to be a corruption of the Spanish word "Cimarrón," meaning wild and untamed, was applied to those negroes, originally fugitive slaves, who, being unable to stand the oppression of their cruel masters, fled to the trackless mountains of the island, dealing death and destruction as they went.

Despairing of fighting the fugitives in their mountain strongholds, the whites