He describes the people whom they at first visited as of fine stature, easy bearing, with long straight hair, and wearing worked handkerchiefs on their heads.  At a little distance it seemed as if these were made of silk, like the gauze veil with which the Spaniards were familiar, from Moorish usage.

“Others,” he says, “wore larger handkerchiefs round their waists, like the panete of the Spaniards.”  By this phrase he means a full garment hanging over the knees, either trousers or petticoats.  These people were whiter in color than the Indians he had seen before.  They all wore something at the neck and arms, with many pieces of gold at the neck.  The canoes were much larger than he had seen, better in build and lighter; they had a cabin in the middle for the princes and their women.

He made many inquiries for gold, but was told he must go farther on, but he was advised not to go there, because his men would be in danger of being eaten.  At first, Columbus supposed that this meant that the inhabitants of the gold-bearing countries were cannibals, but he satisfied himself afterwards that the natives meant that they would be eaten by beasts.  With regard to pearls, also, he got some information that he should find them when he had gone farther west and farther north.

After these agreeable courtesies, the little fleet raised its anchors and sailed west.  Columbus sent one caravel to investigate the river.  Finding that he should not succeed in that direction, and that he had no available way either north or south, he leaves by the same entrance by which he had entered.  The water is still very fresh, and he is satisfied, correctly as we know, that these currents were caused by the entrance of the great river of water.

On the thirteenth of August he leaves the island by what he calls the northern mouth of the river (Boca Grande), and begins to strike salt water again.

At this part of Columbus’s letter there is a very curious discussion of temperature, which shows that this careful observer, even at that time, made out the difference between what are called isothermal curves and the curves of latitude.  He observes that he cannot make any estimate of what his temperature will be on the American coast from what he has observed on the coast of Africa.

He begins now to doubt whether the world is spherical, and is disposed to believe that it is shaped like a pear, and he tries to make a theory of the difference of temperature from this suggestion.  We hardly need to follow this now.  We know he was entirely wrong in his conjecture.  “Pliny and others,” he says, “thought the world spherical, because on their part of it it was a hemisphere.”  They were ignorant of the section over which he was sailing, which he considers to be that of a pear cut in the wrong way.  His demonstration is, that in similar latitudes to the eastward it is very hot and the people are black, while at Trinidad or on the mainland it is comfortable and the people are a fine race of men, whiter than any others whom he has seen in the Indies.  The sun in the constellation of the Virgin is over their heads, and all this comes from their being higher up, nearer the air than they would have been had they been on the African coast.