specks of land in the ocean were not the large and extravagantly rich
island of Japan which Martin Alonzo Pinzon had hoped to find. When
Columbus asked these friendly people for "Cipango," they looked blank
and shook their heads; so did all the other islanders he met during his
three months' cruise among the West Indies. All of the new-found people
were of the same race, spoke the same language, and were equally
ignorant of Cipango and Cathay and India,--lands of rich cities and
temples and marble bridges, and pearls and gold. Columbus had found only
"a poor people," with no clothes and hardly a sign of a golden ornament.
True, when he "inquired by signs" where their few golden trinkets came
from, they pointed vaguely to the south as if some richer land lay
there. And so the Admiral, as we must now call him, never gave up hope.
If, as Pinzon still believed, they had discovered Asiatic islands,
somewhere on the mainland he must surely come upon those treasures which
the Moors had been bringing overland by caravan for centuries past. He
could not go for the treasure this trip; this was nothing more than a
simple voyage of discovery; but he would come and find the wealth that
would enable the Spanish monarchs to undertake a new crusade to the Holy
Land.

October ran into November and November into December, and the Admiral
was still finding islands. He had come, on October 21, to such a far-
reaching coast that he agreed with Martin Pinzon that it must be the
mainland, or Cathay, and started eagerly to follow it west. But the
natives near the shore were timid and fled at the approach of the
strangers. No splendid cities of marble palaces, nor even any mean
little villages of huts, were in sight; so two of the sailors were sent
inland to explore and find the capital of the country. After three days
the explorers returned and reported that all they had seen were many,
many naked savages who dwelt in tiny huts of wood and straw, and who had