Qurios account of Santo. 119 
from one country to another.—The flesh are many hogs, tame 
like ours; and fowls, capons, country partridges, geese, turtle, 
ringdoves, and goats.—The riches are silver and pearls, which 
I saw, and gold, which the other captain saw.” 
He speaks further of marble quarries, of lovely scenery, of 
splendid groves, filled with “thousands of different birds, some 
to appearance nightingales, blackbirds, larks, and goldfinches ;” 
and winds up thus: “It appears that all together will make 
the country so rich that it will be alone able to support itself, 
and also America, and will aggrandise and enrich Spain in such 
a manner as I will show, if I am assisted by others in the 
execution.” 
This is what the Americans would call loud writing or 
tall talk. Those old navigators disdained to stick at plain prosaic 
facts ,when .speaking of anything that they had done, or any 
place that they: had discovered ; and in this case Quiros has 
decidedly let his imagination have free play. To us who know 
the size of the island, and also to a certain extent its capabili- 
ties, there is something extremely ludicrous in the deliberate 
way in which Quiros, who had only seen one side of it, asserts 
that it is as large as Europe, Asia Minor, the Mediterranean 
arid all the islands thereabouts put together, and that it can not 
" only support itself, but also America, besides enriching 
Spain. 
Poor old Quiros—he evidently wished to be a second Her- 
nando Cortez, and no doubt he pictured to himselfhis going out 
to the newly-discovered continent at the head of a numerous 
company—his subjugating the many peoples—his getting pos- 
session of all their riches—his living in the New Jerusalem on 
the banks of the Jordan, in palaces built from the marble 
quarries—and his ruling over that country, living on its many 
productions, and enjoying its numerous pleasures. But that 
was not to be. He never again saw Santo: he could not 
