They had pieces of cotton
cloth, well-woven and great as a sail. Surely, with this
stuff, before long the notion of a sail would arise in these
minds! We saw cotton mantles and other articles of dress,
both white and gayly dyed or figured. Clothing was not to
them the brute amaze we had found it with our eastern
Indians. Matters enough, strange to our experience, were
being carried in that great canoe. We found they had a
bread, not cassava, but made from maize, and a drink much
like English ale, and also a food called cacao.
Gold! All of them wore gold, disks of it, hanging upon
their breasts. The cacique had a thin band of gold across
his forehead; together with a fillet of cotton it held the
bright feathers of his head dress.
They traded the gold--all except the coronal and a sunlike
plate upon the breast of the cacique--willingly enough.
Whence? Whence?
It seemed from Yucatan, on some embassy to another
coast or island. Yucatan. West--west! And beyond
Yucatan richer still; oh, great riches, gold and clothing and
--we thought it from their contemptuous signs toward our
booths and their fingers drawn in the air--true houses and
temples.
Farther on--farther on--farther west! Forever that
haunting, deluding cry--the cry that had deluded since
Guanahani that we called San Salvador. Now many of our
adventurers and mariners caught fire from that cacique's
wide gestures.
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