nd the gods to their country.

The next day being Sunday, Fray Ignatio preached a sermon to the
Indians. He assumed, and at this time I think the Admiral assumed, that
these folk had no religion. That was a mistake. I doubt if on earth can
be found a people without religion.

Men and women they watched and listened, still, attentive, knowing that
it had somehow to do with heaven. After sermon and after we had prayed
and sung, we fashioned and set up a great cross upon cliff brow. Again
the Indians watched and seemed to have some notion of what we did.

The remainder of the day we rested, and on Monday early Roderigo
Jerez, Luis Torres and Juan Lepe with Diego Colon and two Cuba men made
departure, We had a pack of presents and a letter from the Admiral. For
we might meet some administrator or commandant or other, from Quinsai
or Zaiton or we knew not where. This was the first of many--ah, so
many--expeditions, separations from main body and return, or not return,
as the case might be!

CHAPTER XIX

FOREST endless and splendid! We white men often saw no path, but the
red-brown men saw it. It ran level, it climbed, it descended; then began
the three again. It was lost, it was found. They said, "Here path!" But
we had to serpent through thickets, or make way on edge of dizzy crag,
or find footing through morass. We came to great stretches of reeds
and yielding grass, giving with every step into water. It was to toil
through this under hot sun, with stinging clouds of insects. But when
they were left behind we might step into a grove of the gods, such
firmness, such pleasantness, such shady going or happy resting under
trees that dropped fruit.

We met no great forest beasts. There seemed to be none in this part
of Asia. And yet Luis and I had read of great beasts. Dogs of no
considerable size were the largest four-footed things we had come upon
from San Salvador to Cuba. There were what they called _utias_, like a
rabbit, much used for food, and twice we had seen an animal the size of
a fox hanging from a bough by its tail.

If the beasts were few the birds were many. To see the parrots great
and small and gorgeously colored, to see those small, small birds like
tossed jewels that never sang but hummed like a bee, to hear a gray bird
sing clear and loud and sweet every strain that sang other birds, was to
see and hear most joyous things. Lizards were innumerable; at edge of a
marsh we met with tortoises; once w