As the mistake made by Columbus had left for heritage an almost ineradicable passion for the discovery of a westward sea way to Japan and China, so the vast treasure of gold and silver drawn by the Spaniards from Mexico and Peru produced a belief in the English mind that a colony planted at any place on the American coast might find gold. Here, again, the undoubting Hakluyt and other writers after him were ready with learned conclusions balancing on the tight rope of very slender premises. If an Indian had been seen wearing a piece of copper that "bowed easily," this flexibility proved it to be tarnished gold. If a savage seemed to say in his idiom, or by gestures and other signs, something which the puzzled newcomers took to signify that in a country farther on the copper was too soft for use, or that it was yellow, or that it had a good luster, what further evidence could an ingenious writer desire of the existence of the precious metal in that country? Purchas, the successor of Hakluyt in geographical research, explains the divine purpose in thus endowing a heathen land with gold, which is that the Indian race "as a rich bride, though withered and deformed, ... might find many suitors for love of her portion," and thus the pagans be converted. But Purchas filches both the simile and the pious thought from Herrera, who in turn probably pilfered it with many better things from the good Las Casas. Purchas also speaks with more optimism than elegance of the "silver bowels and golden entrails of the hills," as though one had but to dig into the first mountain to be enriched. [Sidenote: Frobisher's gold.] [Sidenote: Early Virginia gold-hunting.] [Sidenote: Note 7.]