these countries lay to leeward, and he could sail thither from Cuba whenever he might think fit, he determined to leave them for another occasion, and persisted in his design of endeavoring to discover the strait across the continent, that he might open the navigation of the South Sea, in order to arrive at the spice countries." How absorbed Columbus was we may know when we read the whole story of this neglected opportunity; for such it proved to be. The natives of Honduras had pictured Mexico as rich and populous beyond all comparison. They dazzled the Spaniards with stories of people who could afford to wear as their ordinary apparel crowns and bracelets and anklets of gold, with garments heavy with golden embroidery; of others, who had chairs and tables inlaid with gold, and who ate and drank out of vessels of the same precious metal. They professed to be familiar with Indian coral and the spices which had made the trade with India so valuable to Spain. Everything in their own land of which the Spaniards boasted these Indians claimed would be found in that wonderful country toward the setting sun. Even the ships and cannon and horses with which they had been at first so astonished actually figured in some of these fancy-sketches of Mexico.
But, though Columbus was convinced that he was in the neighborhood of a rich and civilized people, he had no time to stop by the way until he had fulfilled his great commission from Heaven to enrich the Church from the treasures of India, and to set up the standard of Christ among its heathen people. He supposed that he was near one of the provinces of Tartary and that he would soon reach the Ganges, and he was fired with a holy ambition to be the first son of the Church who
