copper_.
They were strong and fearless, and they seemed to say, "Here before us
is great wonder, but wonder does not subdue our minds!"

Their language had, it is true, the flow and clink of Indian tongues,
yet was greatly different. We had work to understand. But they were past
masters of gesture.

The Admiral sent for presents. Again, these did not ravish, though
the cacique and his family and the rowers regarded with interest such
strange matters. But they seemed to say, "You yourselves and your
fantastic high canoes made, it is evident, of many trees, are the
wonder!"

But we, the Spaniards, searching now through ten years--long as the
War of Troy--for Asia in which that Troy and all wealth beside had been
placed, thought that at last we had come upon traces. In that canoe were
many articles of copper, well enough wrought; a great copper bell,
a mortar and pestle, hatchets and knives. Moreover in Yucatan were
potters! In place of the eternal calabash here were jars and bowls of
baked clay, well-made, well-shaped, marked with strange painted figures.
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 wid