Note Back to Main Text — Chapter V · THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES. WESTWARD OR SPANISH ROUTE.

On reaching Cuba the Admiral was charmed with the marvellous beauty of the landscape,—a point in which he seems to have been unusually sensitive. Columbus reaches Cuba, and sends envoys to find a certain Asiatic prince. He found pearl oysters along the shore, and although no splendid cities as yet appeared, he did not doubt that he had reached Cipango. But his attempts at talking with the amazed natives only served to darken counsel. He understood them to say that Cuba was part of the Asiatic continent, and that there was a king in the neighbourhood who was at war with the Great Khan! So he sent two messengers to seek this refractory potentate,—one of them a converted Jew acquainted with Arabic, a language sometimes heard far eastward in Asia, as Columbus must have known. These envoys found pleasant villages, with large houses, surrounded with fields of such unknown vegetables as maize, potatoes, and tobacco; they saw men and women smoking cigars,[520] and little dreamed that in that fragrant and soothing herb there was a richer source of revenue than the spices of the East. They passed acres of growing cotton and saw in the houses piles of yarn waiting to be woven into rude cloth or twisted into nets for hammocks. But they found neither cities nor kings, neither gold nor spices, and after a tedious quest returned, somewhat disappointed, to the coast.