canoe, they had not the courage to defend themselves against those in our boats who pursued them. The canoe being taken without any opposition it was brought to the admiral’s caravel.... He commanded that such articles should be taken as were thought to be the most desirable and valuable, as quilts, shirts of cotton without sleeves, curiously made and dyed with different colors, apron-cloths, and large sheets in which the Indian women in the canoe wrapped themselves as the Moorish women, formerly in Granada, were in the habit of doing. There were also long wooden swords, with grooved edges on each side, in which sharp pieces of flint were compactly fastened with thread and a bituminous substance, and these cut naked men as if they were made of steel; also copper hatchets to cut wood, like those of stone which the other Indians use; also bells of the same metal, and dishes and crucibles to melt it in. For food they had such roots and grain as the people of Española eat, and a kind of liquor made of maize, like the English beer, and an abundance of cacao-nuts, which in New Spain pass for money, which they seemed to value very much, for when they were brought aboard among the other goods, I observed that when any of these nuts fell, the Indians all stooped to pick them up, as if they were things of value.... Notwithstanding the admiral had heard so much from those in the canoe concerning the great wealth, politeness, and ingenuity of the people westward toward New Spain, yet thinking that he could sail to those countries lying to the leeward, when he thought fit from Cuba, he would not go that way at this time, but adhered to his intention of discovering a strait in the continent to pass into the South Sea,[208] by which he could sail to the countries that produce spice. Therefore he resolved to sail eastward toward Veragua and Nombre de Dios, where he imagined the strait to be.... He was deceived in the undertaking, for he did not conceive it to be an isthmus, or a narrow neck of land, as it really was, but a small bay extending from sea to sea.”[209] On the coast of Veragua, now the isthmus of Panama or Darien, Columbus found the ruins of an immense building covered with tables of strange hieroglyphics and unique reliefs. These vestiges of an ancient civilization made so profound an impression on the mind of the admiral that he selected a curiously elaborated piece of the wall, and brought it away in one of his caravels. “This was the first place, in the Indies,” says Ferdinand Columbus, “where they saw any sign of an edifice. It was a great mass of wall of imagery seemingly composed of lime and stone. The admiral ordered a piece of it to be brought away to show the evidence of its antiquity.”[210]