This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 Excerpt: ...value. It was in their Cuban explorations that they first learned of the use of potatoes and of sweet potatoes and found mastic gum, " good for pains in the stomach," and hammocks and tobacco. In one house they found a cake of yellow wax from Yucatan, which Columbus saved for his sovereigns, and regarding which his ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 Excerpt: ...value. It was in their Cuban explorations that they first learned of the use of potatoes and of sweet potatoes and found mastic gum, " good for pains in the stomach," and hammocks and tobacco. In one house they found a cake of yellow wax from Yucatan, which Columbus saved for his sovereigns, and regarding which his journal says that "where there is wax there must also be a thousand other good things." To what use Queen Isabella put the wax from Yucatan has not been told. Before the little fleet reached the eastern end of Cuba, the Admiral had fresh proof of disloyalty among his own men. Martin Alonzo Pinzon, who in the beginning had been his trusted friend, yielded to the lust for gold that was soon to prove the undoing of all the Spanish adventurers. His own vessel, the Pinta, being speedier than the Santa Maria, he boldly sailed away to the islands where he hoped to make his fortune by discovering gold and by trading for it, before the Admiral with his foolish ideas of honesty and fair dealing could overtake him and interfere. CHAPTER VIII THE TREACHERY OF THE SEA 1492-1493 Deserted by the Pinta, the Santa Maria and the Nina slowly pushed their way eastward toward Haiti. The Haitian coast revealed new vistas of surprising beauty. Stately mountains rising many thousand feet above the sea made the climate more benign than that of Cuba or of the smaller islands. Every new thing excited the enthusiasm of the Admiral. Because "the trees were green and full of fruit, and the grasses all in flower, the roads very wide and the breezes like those of Castile in April, and because the birds sang as they did in Spain," and the sight of the mountains carried his thoughts homeward, he gave to the new island the name of Espanola, or " ...
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