Clearly, these little
specks of land in the ocean were not the large and extravagantly rich
island of Japan which Martin Alonzo Pinzon had hoped to find. When
Columbus asked these friendly people for "Cipango," they looked blank
and shook their heads; so did all the other islanders he met during his
three months' cruise among the West Indies. All of the new-found people
were of the same race, spoke the same language, and were equally
ignorant of Cipango and Cathay and India,--lands of rich cities and
temples and marble bridges, and pearls and gold. Columbus had found only
"a poor people," with no clothes and hardly a sign of a golden ornament.
True, when he "inquired by signs" where their few golden trinkets came
from, they pointed vaguely to the south as if some richer land lay
there. And so the Admiral, as we must now call him, never gave up hope.
If, as Pinzon still believed, they had discovered Asiatic islands,
somewhere on the mainland he must surely come upon those treasures which
the Moors had been bringing overland by caravan for centuries past. He
could not go for the treasure this trip; this was nothing more than a
simple voyage of discovery; but he would come and find the wealth that
would enable the Spanish monarchs to undertake a new crusade to the Holy
Land.
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