BELIEF IN ASIA 73 



The plan was to follow this coast in a southerly and 

 ultimately westerly direction past Java Major, 

 Pentan, Seilan, the Strait of Malacca, and into the 

 Indian Ocean to the India of the Ganges. 



When the coast was found to run east and west 

 nothing was more natural, on such an hypothesis, 

 than for Columbus to turn eastwards. He was by 

 theory on the eastern shore of Asia: to go south he 

 should keep the shore on his right; to keep it on his 

 left would lead him back around the coast of Ciamba 

 and Mangi to Espaflola. Unless Columbus was 

 guided almost entirely by such a theory he would 

 certainly have expected to find his strait north in- 

 stead of south from Honduras, because he had en- 

 countered strong northwestw^ard currents as he 

 crossed the sea from Cuba to Honduras. But he 

 persisted in his course to the south, rounded Cape 

 Gracias a Dios, and proceeded down the coast of 

 Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. The east- 

 ward trend of the coast did not worry him because 

 Marco Polo had described the course from Ciamba 

 as between south and southeast to Java.^" More- 

 over, the country was full of gold, as Polo had de- 

 scribed the lands bordering the Sea of Chin. If 

 further confirmation were needed, the natives told 



1892-94, in "Coleccion de documentos ineditos relatives al descubrimi- 

 ento, conquista y organizacion de las antiguas posesiones espanolas 

 de Ultramar," 2nd series. Vols. 7 and 8, Real Academia de Historia, 

 Madrid; reference in Vol. 7, p. 263). 



2' Marco Polo, Book 3. Ch. 6 (Yule, op. cit.. Vol. 2, pp. 272-275). 



