They were not gone a half league, when, watching from the
_Consolacion_ we marked a strange and horrid thing. There
came without wind a swelling of the sea. Our ships tossed
as in tempest, and there entered the river a wall of sea
water. Meeting the outward passing current, there ensued
a fury with whirlpools. It caught the boats. Diego Mendez
saved his, but the other was seized, tossed and engulfed.
Eight men drowned.
The thing sank as it had come. The River of Disaster,
we named it, and left this strip of coast that seemed to us
gloomy and portentous. "_Wizardry! It's not to be lucky,
this voyage_." It was now late September.
Next day, we anchored, it being most clear and beautiful.
We lay beside a verdurous islet, between it and a green shore.
Here were all our fruits, and we thought we smelled cinnamon
and clove. Across, upon the main, stood a small
village. _Cariari_ the Indians there called themselves. They
had some gold, but not to touch that canoe from Yucatan.
Likewise they owned a few cotton mantles, with jars of
baked clay, and we saw a copper hatchet. But they did
not themselves make these things. They had drifted to
them, we thought, from a people far more skilled.
The Admiral cried, "When and when and when shall
we come to this people?"
I answered, "I tell you what is in my mind, and I have
got it, I think, from your inmost mind, out of which you
will not let it come forth because you have had a great
theory and think you must stand to it.
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