We have now once more, in following according to time the progress of discovery towards the Isthmus, to return to the voyages of Columbus. He was already sixty-six years of age when he embarked on his fourth and last voyage. His squadron, consisting of four small _caravels_, set out from Cadiz on the 9th of May 1502, and, after some delay on the coast of Morocco, reached the _Caribbee_ Islands on the 15th of June. Having been refused admission to enter the port of _San Domingo_, Columbus, after riding out a fearful storm, sailed for some time along the coast of _Honduras_, with the object, which was ever before him in this expedition, of finding a supposed strait opening out into the Indian Ocean. On the 17th of October he arrived off the coast of _Veragua_, where he found the natives possessed of many ornaments of gold. The Spaniards likewise found in this quarter the first signs of solid architecture which they had discovered in the New World. The great discoverer is honourably distinguished from others in that the advancement of science, rather than the acquisition of the precious metals, was the object of his quest. Although told by his interpreters, when sailing along the coast of _Veragua_, that in five towns which he passed he might obtain great quantities of gold, and although the natives placed so little value on objects of this mineral that they were always ready to exchange them for Spanish trifles, Columbus preferred to continue his course in order the sooner to arrive at the supposed strait. “I would not rob nor outrage the country,” says the admiral in one of his letters, “since reason requires that it should be settled, and then the gold may be procured without violence.” Columbus was an Italian; but it is safe to affirm that the sentiment expressed in the above sentence would not have been uttered by any one amongst the Spanish adventurers of the period.