The canoe was filled with all kinds of articles of manufacture and natural production. The Indians, without fear, came alongside the Admiral’s caravel. He was delighted to obtain, without trouble, specimens of so many important articles of this part of the New World. Among them were hatchets formed of copper, wooden swords with channels on each side of the blade, in which sharp flints were firmly fixed by cords formed of the intestines of fishes, such as were afterwards found among the Mexicans. There were bells and other articles of copper, and clay utensils; cotton shirts worked, and dyed with various colours; great quantities of cacao, a fruit as yet unknown to the Spaniards, and a beverage resembling beer, extracted from Indian corn. Their provisions consisted of maize bread, and roots of various kinds. Many of the articles they willingly exchanged for European trinkets. The women were wrapped in mantles like the female Moors of Grenada, and the men had cloths of cotton round their loins. From their being clothed, and from the superiority of their manufactures, the Admiral believed that he was approaching more civilised nations.
The natives stated that they had just arrived from a rich cultivated country, with the wealth and magnificence of which they endeavoured to impress him. His mind, however, being bent on the discovery of the strait, and believing that he could easily visit them at some future period, he determined to seek the mainland, and keep steadily on until he reached the opening between it and Paria.
Had he followed the advice of his visitors he might have discovered Mexico, and even the Southern Ocean might have been disclosed to him. He was encouraged to persist in the course he had designed by hearing from an old man, whom he had detained as pilot, that there were many places farther on abounding in gold.
Reaching the mainland on Sunday, the 14th of August, he and his officers, and many of the men, landed, and Mass was performed under the trees. On the 17th the Adelantado went ashore near the mouth of a river, and took possession of the country in the name of their Catholic Majesties. At this place upwards of a hundred Indians appeared, laden with bread, maize, fish, fowl, vegetables, and fruits.
These they laid down as presents, and then, without speaking a word, drew back. The Adelantado distributed among them various trinkets, which so pleased them that they came with still more abundant supplies. These natives had higher foreheads than those of the islands. Some were entirely naked and had their bodies tatooed, some wore coverings about the loins, and others short cotton jerkins without sleeves. The chieftains had coats of white or coloured cotton. The Indian guide asserted that some of them were cannibals.
Day after day, exposed to storms, drenching rains, and currents, Columbus made his way along the coast of Honduras, often gaining only a league or two in the day. Though suffering from gout, he still attended to his duty, having had a small cabin fitted on deck from which he could keep a look-out. Often he was so ill that he thought his end was approaching.
At length, after two months of continued gales, fine weather returned, and he doubled the Cape, to which he gave the name of Gracias a Dios, or Thanks to God. He next sailed along what is now called the Mosquito shore, seeing many rivers in which grew enormous reeds, abounding with fish, alligators, and turtles.
While the squadron was anchored near a river and the boats were on shore to obtain wood and water, a bore, or swell of the sea, occurred, by which one of them was swallowed up, and all on board perished. The name, therefore, of El Rio del Desastro was given to the river.
The next place at which the ships dropped anchor was between a beautiful island, which Columbus called La Huerta, or The Garden, and the mainland, where some way up was a native village named Cariari. The inhabitants, seeing the ships, quickly gathered on the shore, prepared to defend their country; but when the Spaniards made no attempt to land, their hostility ceased, and, waving their mantles, they invited the strangers on shore. Swimming off, they brought mantles of cotton and ornaments of guanin.
The Admiral, though he made them presents, would take nothing in exchange, and the savages, supposing that their proffered gifts were despised, retaliated, pretending indifference to the things offered them, and, on returning on shore, tied all the European articles up and left them on the beach.