By great good fortune, however, they managed to get through the
Archipelago without mishap. By June 3rd they were sailing along the
coast again, and Columbus had some conversation with an old cacique who
told him of a province called Mangon (or so Columbus understood him) that
lay to the west. Sir John Mandeville had described the province of Mangi
as being the richest in Cathay; and of course, thought the Admiral, this
must be the place. He went westward past the Gulf of Xagua and got into
the shallow sandy waters, now known as the Jardinillos Bank, where the
sea was whitened with particles of sand. When he had got clear of this
shoal water he stood across a broad bay towards a native settlement where
he was able to take in yams, fruit, fish, and fresh water.

But this excitement and hard work were telling on the Admiral, and when a
native told him that there was a tribe close by with long tails, he
believed him; and later, when one of his men, coming back from a shore
expedition, reported that he had seen some figures in a forest wearing
white robes, Columbus believed that they were the people with the tails,
who wore a long garment to conceal them.

He was moving in a world of enchantment; the weather was like no weather
in any known part of the world; there were fogs, black and thick, which
blew down suddenly from the low marshy land, and blew away again as
suddenly; the sea was sometimes white as milk, sometimes black as pitch,
sometimes purple, sometimes green; scarlet cranes stood looking at them
as they slid past the low sandbanks; the warm foggy air smelt of roses;
shoals of turtles covered the waters, black butterflies circled in the
mist; and the fever that was beginning to work in the Admiral's blood
mounted to his brain, so that in this land of bad dreams his fixed ideas
began to dominate all his other faculties, and he decided that he must
certainly be on the coast of Cathay, in the magic land described by Marco
Polo.

There is nothing which illustrates the arbitrary and despotic government
of sea life so well as the nautical phrase "make it so." The very hours
of the day, slipping westward under the keel of an east-going ship, are
"made" by rigid decree; the captain takes his observation of sun or
stars, and announces the position of the ship to be at a certain spot on
the surface of the globe; any errors of judgment or deficiencies of
method are covered by the words "make it so." And in all