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such pleasure, even when they had never before seen or heard of the things they were showing them and he was inquiring about.” The Indians went so far as to include fantastic descriptions of “people who lived in the lands of which they spoke [who] had ships and lombards, bows and arrows, swords and cuirasses”—armor—“and anything else they saw the Christians had.” Dazzled by the descriptions, Columbus fancied hearing accounts of horses, which were no more part of the landscape than unicorns. As they continued to talk, he misinterpreted their obliging descriptions to mean that he and his men were “only ten days’ journey to the river Ganges”—the largest, holiest river in India.

He immediately wrote a report on his findings for the Sovereigns.

The reason for the misunderstanding, besides Columbus’s overactive imagination and stubbornly held geographical misconceptions, was simple enough. “The whole conversation was conducted in sign language,” in Las Casas’s words. “And either the Indians were deliberately playing games with him, or he simply understood nothing of what they were trying to say and only heard what he wanted to hear.”

On this basis, the Admiral was elated. Here at last was the “great wealth, civilization, and industry” he had promised his Sovereigns. He had been toying with the idea of returning to Cuba, to his way of thinking still a peninsula, not an island, but the opulence of the region persuaded him that he had found a trade route to India, so “he decided to continue with his search for a strait across the mainland that would open a way to the South Sea and the Lands of Spices.” To Columbus, with his rigid yet mystical mind-set, this geographical impossibility seemed logical and in harmony with his interpretation of the Bible, the Travels of Marco Polo, and the authors of antiquity. At last everything was falling into place.

So he sailed on, said his son, “like one groping in the darkness.”

To judge from his son’s words, Columbus no longer assumed he was in Asia, but he believed he could locate a passage—over water, or, surprisingly, over land—leading there. Perhaps echoing the Admiral’s rhetoric, Ferdinand grandly described it as the “doorway through which Spain entered upon the dominion of many seas.” In search of this chimera, Columbus approached the coast of Honduras and “made for a point of the mainland that he called Caxinas from the name of a tree that grew there; this tree produces fruit resembling wrinkled olives with a spongy core,” but on arrival, he found “nothing worthy of mention” with the exception of Indians, dressed, Ferdinand recalled, “like those in the canoe, in dyed shirts and breechclouts”—a loincloth with flaps in the front and back. “They also had thick quilted cotton jerkins like breastplates that were sufficient protection against their darts and even withstood some blows from our swords.” The description strongly implied that some sort of conflict, perhaps hand-to-hand combat, had occurred between the Europeans and the Indians. Ferdinand refrained from saying anything critical about these Indians, but wrote about another group with foreboding, characterizing them as “ugly,” “black,” wearing no clothing, and “very wild in all respects.” The fleet’s captive Indian guide pointed out that they ate both human flesh and raw fish, and pierced holes in their ears large enough to insert hens’ eggs.

By Sunday morning, August 14, 1502, Columbus felt safe enough to go ashore with the captains and a substantial complement of sailors. They celebrated Mass along a placid Honduran beach while Spanish banners fluttered in the humid ocean breeze. Whether or not the participants, the Admiral included, were aware of it, this was the first Mass to be heard on the American mainland, or, as Columbus insisted, in “India.”

Three days later, the Admiral dispatched his brother and several launches to hear another Mass ashore and then “take formal possession of the land in the name of the Catholic Sovereigns.” In recognition, if not comprehension, of the ceremony, “more than a hundred Indians