This was interesting information indeed, and the natives seemed prepared to traffic in all peace and friendliness. Verrazzano found upon investigation that on the north of this bay a very large river, deep at the mouth, came down between steep hills. Afterward, following the shore to the east, he discovered a fine harbor beyond a three-cornered island. Here he met two chiefs of that country, a man of about forty, and a young fellow of twenty-four, dressed in quaintly decorated deerskin mantles, with chains set with colored stones about their necks. He stayed two weeks, refitting the ship with provisions and other necessaries, and observing the place. The crew got by trading and as gifts the beans and corn cultivated by the people, wild fruits and nuts, and furs. Further north they found the tribes less friendly, and at last came so near the end of their provision that Verrazzano decided to return to France. He reached home July 8, 1524, after having sailed along seven hundred leagues of the Atlantic coast. [Illustration: "The natives seemed prepared to traffic in all peace and friendliness"--_Page_ 132] Francis I. was in the thick of a disastrous war with Spain, and had not time just then to consider further explorations. The war was not fairly over when a Cadiz warship, in 1527, caught Verrazzano and hanged him as a pirate. NOTE The not unnatural conclusion of Verrazzano that what he saw was an ocean or a great inland sea led to extraordinary misconceptions in the maps and charts of the time. It was not until the early part of the seventeenth century that the region was actually explored, by Newport and Smith, and found to be only Chesapeake Bay. THE DRUM I wake the gods with my sullen boom-- I am the Drum! They wait for the blood-red flowers that bloom In the heart of the sacrifice, there in the gloom With terror dumb-- I sound the call to his dreadful doom-- I am the Drum! I was the Serpent, the Sacred Snake-- Wolf, bear and fox By the silent shores of river and lake Tread softly, listening lest they wake My voice that mocks The rattle that falling bones will make On barren rocks. My banded skin is the voice of the Priest-- I am the Drum! I sound the call to the War-God's feast Till Tezcatlipoca's power hath ceased And the White Gods come Out of the fire of the burning East-- Hear me, the Drum! X THE GODS OF TAXMAR If the Fathers of the Church had ever been on the other side of the world, they would have made new rules for it. So thought Jeronimo Aguilar, on board a caravel plying between Darien and Hispaniola. It was a thought he would hardly have dared think in Spain.