had come to naught. If only he could have known, or surmised, that his
islands fringed a magnificent new continent that had never even been
dreamed of by civilized man, his worry might have ceased; for surely a
man who had found a new world for Spain need not have found gold
besides; but he knew nothing of the continent as yet; and remembering
the extravagant promises made in Barcelona, he decided to postpone
writing the letter home to Spain until he should make another attempt to
find gold.

Accordingly, he sent two expeditions to different parts of the island to
find the mines which, according to his understanding of the natives'
sign language, must exist. Alonzo de Ojeda and the other captain he sent
out returned each with a little gold; and this slight find was
sufficient to set Columbus's fervid imagination at work again. He sent a
rosy account of the island to the monarchs, and repeated his former
promise to soon send home shiploads of gold and other treasures. And no
wonder that he and so many others wished for gold; for it is written in
his journal, "Gold is the most precious of all substances; gold
constitutes treasure; he who possesses it has all the needs of this
world as well as the price for rescuing souls from Purgatory and
introducing them into Paradise." If gold could do all that, who would
not try to possess it?

But so far as his letter to the monarchs went, Columbus knew, even while
writing it, that real gold and the promise of gold were two very
different things. His promises could never fill up the empty hold of the
ship that was going back to Spain; and so, failing the rich cargo which
the men of La Navidad were to have gathered, Columbus bethought himself
of some other way in which his discoveries might bring money to the
Spanish Crown. The plan he hit upon was the plan of a sick,