There was little reason to linger at St. Croix, and a hard wind soon blew the fleet toward a group of little islands which Columbus named Las Once Mil Virgenes, the Virgin Islands, after the 11,000 legendary virgins who were supposed to have been massacred by the Huns in the 5th century. On November 19th, they arrived off the coast of a large island that the Indians called Boriquien, though Columbus gave it the name of San Juan Bautista, St. John the Baptist. They found a good anchorage at the west coast of that island and remained there for several days while fresh water and supplies were taken aboard. But during that entire time the Spaniards never saw a single native on the island; the Arawak there lived in constant fear of the Carib and maintained a close watch on the coast; there is no telling what fears and superstitions the sight of the Spanish fleet must have caused among them. In any case, all their villages were deserted, and the Spaniards never made any contact with them. But on board one of the ships was a young Spaniard who had already decided that San Juan de Bautista would do nicely for him; Juan Ponce de Leon and this island of Puerto Rico were to play prominent roles in early Spanish-American history.
And the fleet sailed on to the west and northwest, passing another small island, until they reached a low-lying coast that the Indians aboard said was Hispaniola. On November 25, the fleet finally reached the bay where the Santa Maria had been wrecked the previous Christmas Day. Columbus’ foreboding now proved to be all too correct; on entering the bay, the Spaniards could find no trace of buildings or human life anywhere along the shore. A shore party was sent out, only to return with the grim news that the fort of La Navidad had apparently been burned down. Only a few mounds of earth still showed any evidence that this had once been the site of the first European outpost in these islands.
Gradually, through information supplied by the natives, the Spaniards managed to piece together what had happened. The men left behind at La Navidad had quickly demonstrated what Christian civilization intended to bring to these islands. They had begun to quarrel over gold and over women, and one of the white men was soon murdered by several of his comrades. These same men had then begun to scour the island in search for more gold and women, and in the process had entered the territory of a chief named Caonabo, who was little intimidated by these strangers. He not only had the invaders killed, but then immediately set out to rid himself of the source of all these problems, and in the process La Navidad was completely destroyed.
Now, instead of finding an established outpost, manned by Spaniards familiar with the island and its people, Columbus was forced to start all over again. The first problem was to find a new site for a settlement; though Navidad had been a near-perfect choice, with high and dry land and a good harbor, no one felt much like starting over again in this tragic place. Nearby Caracul Bay and its friendly natives was ruled out because it was too swampy, and Cape Haitien seemed too far from the anticipated gold mines of Cibao. On December 7, therefore, the fleet left its anchorage at Navidad in search of a new site.
From that moment on nearly everything went wrong for the Spaniards. Heading east against the trade winds and currents, it took the fleet more than three weeks to cover barely 32 miles. Many of the people aboard fell ill, food supplies ran low, and cattle and horses died. Not until the first days of the new year 1494, with the sailors exhausted, the Admiral himself ill, was it finally decided to put ashore. Unwilling to look any further, the Spaniards began to build a new settlement right then and there.
Named after the Queen of Spain, the settlement of Isabela was in trouble from the beginning. The site itself was an extremely poor choice – there was no proper harbor, no available fresh water, and only limited access to the interior country. But Columbus was now in a hurry to get his men ashore and send the fleet back to Spain; the crews were accumulating pay and eating up food supplies that were already running dangerously low. Several hundred men had fallen ill, and there was little medicine left. They had already wasted an entire month looking for a site which Navidad should have provided, and even the gold the men had presumably collected had disappeared. If he was to impress his Sovereigns, Columbus needed something of value to send back, and he needed it in a hurry. If there was one bright spot in this entire situation, it was the natives’ assurances that Hispaniola’s gold mines were nearby.