ar different from that of
ancient friendship. Pedro Alonso Nino, who had also been on the Paria
coast with Columbus, who had come home with the returning ships, and
whose patience (for he was an exceedingly practical man) had perhaps been
tried by the strange doings of the Admiral in the Gulf of Paria, decided
that he as well as any one else might go and find some pearls. Nino is a
poor man, having worked hard in all his voyagings backwards and forwards
across the Atlantic; but he has a friend with money, one Luis Guerra, who
provides him with the funds necessary for fitting out a small caravel
about the size of his old ship the Nifta. Guerra, who has the money,
also has a brother Christoval; and his conditions are that Christoval
shall be given the command of the caravel. Practical Niflo does not care
so long as he reaches the place where the pearls are. He also applies to
Fonseca for licence to make discoveries; and, duly receiving it, sails
from Palos in the beginning of June 1499, hot upon the track of Ojeda.

They did a little quiet discovery, principally in the domain of human
nature, caroused with the friendly natives, but attended to business all
the time; with the result that in the following April they were back in
Spain with a treasure of pearls out of which, after Nifio had been made
independent for life and Guerra, Christoval, and the rest of them had
their shares, there remained a handsome sum for the Crown. An extremely
practical, businesslike voyage this; full of lessons for our poor
Christopher, could he but have known and learned them.

Yet another of our old friends profited by the Admiral's discovery. What
Vincenti Yafiez Pinzon has been doing all these years we have no record;
living at Palos, perhaps, doing a little of his ordinary coasting
business, administering the estates of his brother Martin Alonso, and,
almost for a certainty, talking pretty big about who it was that really
did all the work in the discovery of the New World. Out of the obscurity
of conjecture he emerges into fact in December 1499, when he is found at
Palos fitting out four caravels for the purpose of exploring farther
along the coast of the southern mainland. That he also was after pearls
is pretty certain; but on the other hand he was more of a sailor than an
adventurer, was a discoverer at heart, and had no small share of the
family taste for sea travel. He took a more southerly course than any of
the others an