The strait was now reported to be near at hand, so the interpreters declared; just beyond a country called Veragua, rich in gold. Eagerly they sped on, passing Veragua with a fair wind that carried them by Limon Bay, where we are now digging the Atlantic entrance of the strait they sought.[1]
The admiral put in at a land-locked, natural harbor, so beautiful that he called it Porto Bello, by which name it has been known ever since. After a week's rest here he pushed on to a number of islands full of wild corn, which he called the Port of Provisions. Finally, on the twenty-fourth of November, he made his furthest harbor, a forgotten little cove named El Retrete, or the Closet.
Here the search for the strait ended. Another white man had been over the ground beyond this, Bastidas, who had escaped from the hurricane at Santo Domingo, and almost certainly met Columbus there. From the Orinoco to Cape Honduras no break had been found in the barrier between the two oceans. So they turned back, battered by storms and terrified by a great waterspout, which, says Ferdinand Columbus, they dissolved by reciting the Gospel of St. John. In Veragua they tried gold-hunting, and attempted to found a colony, but the Indians, under a crafty cacique, rose against them. After hard fighting, and an Odyssey of misfortunes, the Spaniards were forced to flee. They left the hulk of the Gallego, behind them and the Biscaina at Porto Bello. The two remaining caravels, bored through and through by the teredo worm, stag-
- ↑ See Appendix.
