After they had departed, the ships were careened and caulked, and other little jobs were invented to keep the men out of mischief. As to gold, the natives told the old story. There was none of it in their neighborhood, but there was an island farther south where it was as common and cheap as dirt. Seeing how the description pleased the Admiral, they kindly threw in a tribe of natives with one eye in their forehead, and a quantity of select cannibals, and thus increased his desire to visit so remarkable an island. In six days the ambassadors returned. They had found neither Pekin nor the Chinese Emperor--nothing, in fact, except a small village, a naked chief, and a community of placid savages who had no gold and were entirely devoid of interest. They brought back with them a few cold potatoes, a vegetable hitherto unknown to Europeans, and they casually mentioned that they had seen natives in the act of smoking rolls of dark-colored leaves, but they attached no importance to the discovery, and regarded it as a curious evidence of pagan degradation. Little did they know that the dark-colored leaves were tobacco, and that the natives were smoking Partagas, Villar-y-Villar, Intimidads, and other priceless brands of the Vuelt Abajo. The sailors were cursing the worthlessness of a new continent which produced neither rum, wine, nor beer, and yet it was the native land of tobacco! Thus does poor fallen human nature fix its gaze on unattainable rum and Chinese Emperors, and so overlook the cigars that are within its reach. CHAPTER VIII. ADVENTURES ON LAND. [Æt. 56; 1492] On the 12th of November Columbus set sail in search of the gold- and cannibal-bearing island described by the natives and called Babeque. He took with him a few pairs of Cubans for the Madrid Zoological Garden, whom he intended to convert to Christianity in his leisure hours. Babeque was said to be situated about east-by-south from Cuba, and accordingly the fleet steered in that direction, skirting the Cuban coast. Two days later a head-wind and a heavy sea induced Columbus to put back to Cuba, where he waited for a fair wind. On the 19th he again put to sea, but was soon compelled for the second time to return.