Note 3 — Chapter XIV · THE RICH COAST

While here, Columbus held frequent converse with the Indians, whom he found intelligent and well disposed. They brought him gifts of cotton, cloth and gold and evidently were inclined to enter into friendly relations with their strange visitors. In his letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, referring to this land, he writes: “There I saw a tomb in the mountain side as large as a house, and sculptured.3 This is remarkable as being the only passage in all the Admiral’s writings which could warrant us in concluding that he ever set foot on the mainland of the New World.