ence would not have so generally come
to be regarded as inscrutable.

[Footnote 608: "Aqueste tan gran juicio de Dios no curemos de
escudrinallo, pues en el dia final deste mundo nos sera bien
claro." _Hist. do las Indias_, tom. iii. p. 32; cf. _Vita dell'
Ammiraglio_, cap. lxxxvii. As Las Casas was then in San
Domingo, having come out in Ovando's fleet, and as Ferdinand
Columbus was with his father, the testimony is very direct.]

[Sidenote: Arrival at Cape Honduras.]

The hurricane was followed by a dead calm, during which the Admiral's
ships were carried by the currents into the group of tiny islands called
the Queen's Gardens, on the south side of Cuba. With the first
favourable breeze he took a southwesterly course, in order to strike
that Cochin-Chinese coast farther down toward the Malay peninsula. This
brought him directly to the island of Guanaja and to Cape Honduras,
which he thus reached without approaching the Yucatan channel.[609]

[Footnote 609: In the next chapter I shall give some reasons
for supposing that the Admiral had learned the existence of the
Yucatan channel from the pilot Ledesma, coupled with
information which made it unlikely that a passage into the
Indian ocean would be found that way. See below, vol. ii. p.
92.]

[Sidenote: Cape Gracias a Dios.]

Upon the Honduras coast the Admiral found evidences of semi-civilization
with which he was much elated,--such as copper knives and hatchets,
pottery of skilled and artistic workmanship, and cotton garments finely
woven and beautifully dyed. Here the Spaniards first tasted the
_chicha_, or maize beer, and marvelled at the heavy clubs, armed with
sharp blades of obsidian, with which the soldiers of Cortes were by and
by to become unpleasantly acquainted. The people here wore cotton
clothes, and, according to Ferdinand, the women covered themselves as
carefully as the Moorish women of Granada.[610] On inquiring as to the
sources of gold and other wealth, the Admiral was now referred to the
west, evidently to Yucatan and Guatemala, or, as he supposed, to the
neighbourhood of the Ganges. Evidently the way to reach these countries
was to keep the land on the starboard and search for the passage
between the Eden continent and the Malay peninsula.[611] This course at
first led Columbus eastward for a greater number of leagues than he
could hav