Columbus now passed out from among these islands and steered towards a mountainous region, where he again landed and opened intercourse with a pacific tribe on June 3. An old cacique repeated the same story of the illimitable land, and referred to the province of Mangon as lying farther west. This name was enough to rekindle the imagination of the Admiral. Was not Mangi the richest of the provinces that Sir John Mandeville had spoken of? He learned also that a people with tails lived there, just as that veracious narrator had described, and they wore long garments to conceal that appendage. What a sight a procession of these Asiatics would make in another reception at the Spanish Court!
Gulf of Xagua.
White-robed men.
There was nothing now to impede the progress of the caravels, and on the vessels went in their westward course. Every day the crews got fresh fruits from the friendly canoes. They paid nothing for the balmy odors from the land. They next came to the Gulf of Xagua, and passing this they again sailed into shallow waters, whitened with the floating sand, which the waves kept in suspension. The course of the ships was tortuous among the bars, and they felt relieved when at last they found a place where their anchors would hold. To make sure that a way through this labyrinth could be found, Columbus sent his smallest caravel ahead, and then following her guidance, the little fleet, with great difficulty, and not without much danger at times, came out into clearer water. Later, he saw a deep bay on his right, and tacking across the opening he lay his course for some distant mountains. Here he anchored to replenish his water-casks. An archer straying into the forest came back on the run, saying that he had seen white-robed people. Here, then, thought Columbus, were the people who were concealing their tails! He sent out two parties to reconnoitre. They found nothing but a tangled wilderness. It has been suggested that the timorous and credulous archer had got half a sight of a flock of white cranes feeding in a savanna. Such is the interpretation of this story by Irving, and Humboldt tells us there is enough in his experience with the habits of these birds to make it certain that the interpretation is warranted.
Columbus believes he sees the Golden Chersonesus,
Still the Admiral went on westerly, opening communication occasionally with the shore, but to little advantage in gathering information, for the expedition had gone beyond the range of dialects where the Lucayan interpreter could be of service. The shore people continued to point west, and the most that could be made of their signs was that a powerful king reigned in that direction, and that he wore white robes. This is the story as Bernaldez gives it; and Columbus very likely thought it a premonition of Prester John. The coast still stretched to the setting sun, if Columbus divined the native signs aright, but no one could tell how far. The sea again became shallow, and the keels of the caravels stirred up the bottom. The accounts speak of wonderful crowds of tortoises covering the water, pigeons darkening the sky, and gaudy butterflies sweeping about in clouds. The shore was too low for habitation; but they saw smoke and other signs of life in the high lands of the interior. When the coast line began to trend to the southwest,—it was Marco Polo who said it would,—there could be little doubt that the Golden Chersonesus of the ancients, which we know to-day as the Malacca peninsula, must be beyond.
by which he would return to Spain.
What next? was the thought which passed through the fevered brain of the Admiral. He had an answer in his mind, and it would make a new sensation for his poor colony at Isabella to hear of him in Spain. Passing the Golden Chersonesus, had he not the alternative of steering homeward by way of Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope, and so astound the Portuguese more than he did when he entered the Tagus? Or, abandoning the Indian Ocean and entering the Red Sea, could he not proceed to its northern extremity, and there, deserting his ships, join a caravan passing through Jerusalem and Jaffa, and so embark again on the Mediterranean and sail into Barcelona, a more wonderful explorer than before?
These were the sublimating thoughts that now buoyed the Admiral, as he looked along the far-stretching coast,—or at least his friend Bernaldez got this impression from his intercourse with Columbus after his return to Spain.