many miles that Columbus was certain it was the mainland of Asia. There
was some excuse for this mistake. The great number of small islands he
had sailed by all seemed to lie just as the books about Cathay that
he had read said they did; the trees and fruits that he found in these
islands seemed to be just the same that travelers said grew in Cathay.

To be sure the marble temples, the golden-roofed palaces, the gorgeous
cities had not yet appeared; but Columbus was so certain that he had
found Asia that he made all his men sign a paper in which they declared
that the land they had found (which was, as you know, the island of
Cuba) was really and truly the coast of Asia.

This did not make it so, of course; but it made the people of Spain, and
the king and queen, think it was so. And this was most important. So,
to keep the sailors from going back on their word and the statement they
had signed, Columbus ordered that if any officer should afterward say
he had been mistaken, he should be fined one hundred dollars; and if any
sailor should say so, he should receive one hundred lashes with a whip
and have his tongue pulled out. That was a curious way to discover
Cathay, was it not?

Then Columbus, fearing another shipwreck or another mutiny, sailed back
again to the city of Isabella. His men were discontented, his ships were
battered and leaky, his hunt for gold and palaces had again proved a
failure. He sailed around Jamaica; he got as far as the eastern end
of Hayti, and then, just as he was about to run into the harbor of
Isabella, all his strength gave out. The strain and the disappointment
were too much for him; he fell very, very sick, and on the twenty-ninth
of September, 1494, after just about five months of sailing and
wandering and hunting, the Nina ran into Isabella Harbor with Columbus