We have already quoted the enthusiastic encomium of Columbus upon Cuba at his first sight of and landing upon its shore. His diary and his narrative to the sovereigns of Leon and Castile on his return to Spain abound with similar expressions, as well as with informing bits of description of Cuba as they then found it. In the very first days of his first visit he found villages of houses "made like booths, very large, and looking like tents in a camp without regular streets but one here and another there. Within they were clean and well swept, with furniture well made. All were of palm branches, beautifully constructed. They found many images in the shape of women, and many heads like masks, very well carved. It was not known whether these were used as ornaments, or were to be worshipped."
The waters abounded in fish, and the people of the coast regions were apparently nearly all fishermen. The only domestic animals were the "dogs which never barked," and birds in cages. There were seen, however, skulls like those of cows, on which account Columbus assumed that inland there were herds of cattle. All night the air was vocal with the songs of birds and the chirping of crickets and other insects, which lulled the voyagers to rest. Along the shore and in the mouths of rivers were found large shells, unlike any that he had known in Spain, but no pearls were in them. The air was soft and salubrious, and the nights were neither hot nor cold. On the other islands which he had visited the heat was oppressive, a circumstance which he attributed to the flat and low-lying land; while Cuba was mountainous and therefore was blessed with cooling breezes.
At some point on the northeastern coast, probably in the neighborhood of Point Sama, a month after his first landing, he imagined that he had discovered deposits of gold. It was in the bed of a river, near its mouth, that he saw stones shining, as if with gold, and he had them gathered, to take home to Spain and to present to the sovereigns. At the same point some of the sailors called his attention to the pine trees on a neighboring hill. They were "so wonderfully large that he could not exaggerate their height and straightness, and he perceived that in them was material for great stores of planks and masts for the largest ships of Spain."