Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/668

 her, hatchets of copper, wooden swords with sharp flints inserted, and made fast by lines of fish intestines, several copper bells and a rude kind of crucible—with various utensils in clay, marble, and hard wood. It also contained quantities of cacao, a substance not then known to the Spaniards, and which the Indians used both for food and as a species of currency. The Indians made use of a beverage resembling beer, and made from maize; and their women wore mantles, like those of the Moorish women at Granada. From some intelligent natives who were on board this vessel Columbus learned that they came from a rich and luxuriant country in the West, towards which they strongly advised the admiral to steer; and had he acted on this advice, he must have reached Yucatan in a day or two, and added to his previous discoveries that also of Mexico.

The discovery of the other opulent countries of New Spain would have necessarily followed; while the disclosure of the Southern Ocean would have revealed to him the true form of that interesting portion of the world, and, affording a succession of splendid discoveries, would have shed fresh renown on his declining years. But Columbus was intent on discovering the imaginary strait which would lead him to the land of Cathay, and the spice islands of India, which Marco Polo had so glowingly described. Consequently on leaving the island of Guanaga, he stood southerly till he discovered the land now known as Cape Honduras, where he again encountered heavy storms, by which his vessel suffered much damage. "I have seen many storms," said Colum-*