So he sailed along the coasts of Honduras and Nicaragua trying to find the strait he was hunting for.  Just look at your map and see how near he was to the way across to the Pacific that men are now digging out, and which, as the Nicaragua Canal, will connect the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.  And think how near he was to finding that Pacific Ocean over which, if he could but have got across the Isthmus of Panama, he could have sailed to the Cathay and the Indies he spent his life in trying to find.  But if he had been fortunate enough to get into the waters of the Pacific, I do not believe it would have been so lucky for him, after all.  His little ships, poorly built and poorly provisioned, could never have sailed that great ocean in safety, and the end might have proved even more disastrous than did the Atlantic voyages of the Admiral.

He soon understood that he had found a richer land than the islands he had thus far discovered.  Gold and pearls were much more plentiful along the Honduras coast than they were in Cuba and Hayti, and Columbus decided that, after he had found India, he would come back by this route and collect a cargo of the glittering treasures.

The land was called by the Indians something that sounded very much like Veragua.  This was the name Columbus gave to it; and it was this name, Veragua, that was afterward given to the family of Columbus as its title; so that, to-day, the living descendant of Christopher Columbus in Spain is called the Duke of Veragua.

But as Columbus sailed south, along what is called “the Mosquito Coast,” the weather grew stormy and the gales were severe.  His ships were crazy and worm-eaten; the food was running low; the sailors began to grumble and complain and to say that if they kept on in this way they would surely starve before they could reach India.

Columbus, too, began to grow uneasy.  His youngest son, Ferdinand, a brave, bright little fellow of thirteen, had come with him on this voyage, and Columbus really began to be afraid that something might happen to the boy, especially if the crazy ships should be wrecked, or if want of food should make them all go hungry.  So at last he decided to give up hunting for the strait that should lead him into the Bay of Bengal; he felt obliged, also, to give up his plan of going back to the Honduras coast for gold and pearls.  He turned his ships about and headed for Hayti where he hoped he could get Governor Ovando to give him better ships so that he could try it all over again.

Here, you see, was still another disappointing defeat for Columbus.  For after he had been on the American coast for almost a year; after he had come so near to what he felt to be the long-looked-for path to the Indies; after most wonderful adventures on sea and land, he turned his back on it all, without really having accomplished what he set out to do and, as I have told you, steered for Hayti.