We have seen that Columbus at first unhesitatingly believed it to be Cipango which he had reached. Despite that fact, and also despite the fact that the natives called it Cuba, he insisted upon renaming it. In accordance with his previous practice in nomenclature, it must have a very noble and distinguished name. His first landfall he had named for the Holy Saviour Himself; the second for the Holy Virgin; the third for the King, and the fourth for the Queen of Leon and Castile. The next name in order, in dignity and distinction, was that of the heir to the dual throne, wherefore he named the land Juana. Most writers, including Irving, have made the curious but facile mistake of saying that this name was given "in honor of Prince Juan, the son of Ferdinand and Isabella." It was, in fact, in honor of Princess Juana, the daughter of those sovereigns. She was that unhappy princess who because of her insanity was called "La Loca," and who by her marriage with Philip of Burgundy and of Hapsburg brought a new dynasty to the Spanish throne and greatly involved the monarchy in the politics and wars of Central Europe. Juana was mentally incompetent to succeed to the throne of Castile which she inherited upon the death of her mother, wherefore she was compelled to relinquish it to the regency of her father; and when he united Castile with Aragon, and conquered and annexed Navarre and Granada, and thus became the first King of Spain, Cuba was renamed in his honor and known no longer as Juana but as Ferdinandina, or Fernandina. Still later it was called San Diego, or Santiago; and again Ave Maria Alfa y Omega. But these names were transitory. The natives never accepted one of them, but clung to the old name of Cuba, and there was a fine touch of poetic justice in the fact that that name survived the extinction of the race that had cherished it. Under the ruthless rule of the Conquistadores the aboriginal population of the island almost entirely vanished, and with them practically all traces of their existence save four. These were the name and use of tobacco, the name and use of hammocks, the name and use of canoes, and the name of the island itself.
It would not have been surprising, and it would have been quite pardonable, had Columbus seen everything in the New World through glasses of _couleur de rose_. Naturally of a romantic and imaginative temperament, he experienced in the realization of his long-cherished ambition such a degree of spiritual and mental exaltation as seldom has come to mortal man. Yet quite apart from this, the native beauty of Cuba, as seen to our eyes to-day, abundantly justifies the rhapsodies in which he indulged in describing it. On that first memorable Sunday he wrote in his diary, "This is the most beautiful land ever beheld by human eyes." From the quarter-deck of the _Santa Maria_ he gazed with rapture upon the profuse verdure of the shore and of the hills which rose in the back-ground, observing with admiration and surprise that the trees grew down to the very water's edge, as did also the herbage, as he had never seen it elsewhere. The palms and other trees were largely of different kinds from those which he had seen in Spain, in Guinea, and elsewhere, and they bore flowers and fruit in great profusion, while among them were innumerable birds, beautiful to the eye and with songs entrancing to the ear.