There can be little doubt that this bay was the scene of that first landing of Cortes on the American mainland which was destined so largely to shape the future of Central America. It was curious to land and wander in the desolate woods, the battle-ground of four centuries past, picturing to oneself the romance of it all. Further eastward we put in to examine some ruins which showed above the trees. They proved to be those of a Catholic church and monastery, probably eighteenth-century work. The church was full of bats, which fluttered down from the mildewed walls frightened at the unwonted intrusion. Here and there along the coast southward from the cape we found signs of ancient Indian settlements. The ruins were in no way majestic, but were probably relics of outlying fisher settlements, and only interesting because significant of the building zeal of the pre-Conquest Indians. This great sweep of coastline must have ever been what it is to-day--swampy and impassable; in no way inviting to the establishment of large cities such as Chichen and Uxmal, but used rather as a vast hunting ground by the tribes of the interior. Even in typical tropic weather there is much discomfort in life in a three-ton boat. So far the weather had been perfect; and once round the cape, we got the full benefit of the trade-winds which blow here all the year round. As Dryden in his _Annus Mirabilis_ writes: "But now, the Cape once doubled, fear no more; A constant trade wind will securely blow And gently lay us on the spicy shore." Our "spicy shore" was the fruitful island of Cozumel, of the fertile beauty of which we had heard such glowing accounts; but once round the cape, our troubles proved by no means over. After a few days the weather broke. The night was perfect. A full moon bathed the quiet sea and the wooded coasts in a wonderful silver light, and as we stared up into the sky from our bed of sand-ballast sacks in the bottom of the boat, it seemed as if the stars had never shone so brightly. But with the dawn we ran into the fringe of what is known in the Gulf of Mexico as a "norther"; and the weather ahead looked so dirty that we took refuge in a tiny islet called Isla Arena (Sand Island). It was an ideally lonely Robinson Crusoey spot. A few deserted huts marked it as the occasional home of passing fishermen. We swung our hammocks in that which had the most water-tight thatch, and then walked round the island with the guns in search of duck. In the centre was a touching little cemetery; a square of sand humbly marked off with sea-shells; the graves--six of them--each with a rudely fashioned wooden cross; and black spirit-bottles, which had once served as flower vases, stood around. It is a wild life these Yucatecan fishermen often lead, and as we stood bare-headed by this "Garden of Sleep," those haunting lines on Stevenson's Samoan tomb came to our minds: