This seems to us a foolish course, for no matter at what point he struck
land, how would he know whether to explore to the left or right for his
straits? Why this least desirable of three courses was taken neither the
Admiral nor his son explained in their diaries. Of course he found
land,--the Honduras coast; but of course he had no means of knowing what
relation it had either to Cuba or to the land around the Gulf of Paria.
Thus the poor Admiral lost his last chance of arriving at any just
conclusions of the magnitude of his discovery.
Before reaching this Honduras coast they stopped at the Isle of Pines,
where they saw natives in comfortable-looking house boats; that is, huge
canoes sixty feet long, cut from a single mahogany tree, and with a
roofed caboose amidships. These natives wore plenty of gold ornaments
and woven clothing; they had copper hatchets and sharp blades of flint;
and they used a sort of money for buying and selling. In other words, it
was the nearest approach to civilization that Columbus had ever seen in
his new lands. He tried by signs to ask about all these things, and the
natives pointed west as the place from which their house boat had come.
But so keen was Columbus for "the straits" to the Indian Ocean that even
gold could not divert him this time; he refused to proceed due west, and
thus failed to discover Mexico, the richest region the Spaniards were
ever to find on the North American continent.
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