"Sing, all of us!
'Stella Maris--
Sancta Maria!' "
With the morning the _Santa Clara_ and the _San Juan_,
beaten about, some injury done, but alive! And the coast
of Cuba, nearer, nearer, tall and blue--and at last very tall
and green and gold.
Off Cuba and still off Cuba, the southern coast now, as
against the northern that once we tried for a while. Sail
and come to land, stay a bit, and shake out sails once
more!
Wherever we tarried we found peaceable if vastly excited
Indians. But still naked, but still unwise as to gold
and spices, traders and markets. Cambalu, Quinsai and
Zaiton of the marble bridges!
" `Somewhere,' saith Messer Marco, `in part the country
is savage, filled with mountains, and here come few
strangers, for the king will not have them, in order that his
treasures and certain matters of his kingdom come not into
the world's knowledge.' And again he saith, `The folk here
are naked.'--What wonder then," said the Admiral, "that
we find these things! Yea, I feel surprised at the incessancy,
but I check myself and think, how vast is Asia, and what
variousness must needs be!"
But we moved in a cloud of differences, and while on
the one hand this world was growing familiar, on the other
the sense increased. "How vast indeed must be Asia, if
all this and yet we come not--and now it is going on two
years--to any clear hint of other than this!"
He himself, the Admiral, began to feel this strangeness.
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