Page:The Ifs of History (1907).pdf/47

 to make it clear to him that a greater land, which was Cuba, and which he called "Cipango," lay in this southerly direction. That way he laid his course, "in order," as he wrote in his journal, "to go to this other island which is very large and where all these men whom I am bringing from the island of San Salvador make signs that there is a great deal of gold and that they wear bracelets of it on their arms and legs and in their ears and in their noses and on their breasts."

Reason enough! Only it meant that Spain's energy in this hemisphere was to be directed to the West Indies, and South America, and Mexico, for as long a time as it was destined to endure, and that the vast continental North was to be left as the heritage of another race.

It is true that Florida afterward became Spanish. But it was not a question of what Florida, merely, was to be. If Columbus had landed upon