s and surpass beyond
comparison the isle of Cetrefrey (Sicily). These display themselves in all
manner of beautiful shapes. They are accessible in every part, and covered
with a vast variety of lofty trees which it appears to me never lose their
foliage. Some were covered with blossoms, some with fruit, and others in
different stages according to their nature. There are palm trees of six or
eight sorts. Beautiful forests of pines are likewise found, and fields of
vast extent. Here are also honey and fruits of thousand sorts, and birds of
every variety."

Having landed at this indefinitely located point, Columbus, believing that
he had reached the region he was seeking, despatched messengers to the
interior to open communication with some high official of Cathay, in which
country he supposed himself to be, the idea of Cipango apparently having
been abandoned. "Many at the present day," says Washington Irving, "will
smile at this embassy to a naked savage chieftain in the interior of Cuba,
in mistake for an Asiatic monarch; but such was the singular nature of this
voyage, a continual series of golden dreams, and all interpreted by the
deluding volume of Marco Polo." But the messengers went on their journey,
and proceeded inland some thirty or forty miles. There they came upon a
village of about fifty huts and a population of about a thousand. They were
able to communicate only by signs, and it is quite certain that the replies
of the natives were as little understood by the messengers as the questions
were by the natives. The messengers sought something about which the
natives knew little or nothing. The communications were interpreted through
the medium of imagination and desire. Nothing accomplished, the commission
returned and made its disappointing report. Washington Irving thus
describes the further proceedings: "The report of the envoys put an end to
the many splendid fancies of Columbus, about the barbaric prince and his
capital. He was cruising, however, in a region of enchantment, in which
pleasing chimeras started up at every step, exercising by turns a power
over his imagination. During the absence of the emissaries, the Indians
had informed him, by signs, of a place to the eastward, where the people
collected gold along the river banks by torchlight and afterward wrought it
into bars with hammers. In speaking of this place they again used the words
Babeque and Bohio, which he, as usual, supposed to be the proper