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LIFE A N D VOYAGES OF
[BOOK
XV.
The natives of this neighborhood, and for a considerable dis tance eastward, had higher foreheads than those of the islands. They were of different languages, and varied from each other in their decorations. Some were entirely naked ; and their bodies were marked by means of fire with the figures of various animals. Some wore coverings about the loins ; others short cotton jerkins without sleeves : some wore tresses of hair in front. The chief tains had caps of white or colored cotton. When arrayed for any festival, they painted their faces black, or with stripes of various colors, or with circles round the eyes. The old Indian guide assured the admiral that many of them were cannibals. In one part of the coast the natives had their ears bored, and hideously distended ; which caused the Spaniards to call that region la Costa de la Oreja, or “ the Coast of the Ear.”* From the River of Possession, Columbus proceeded along what is at present called the coast of Honduras, beating against contrary winds, and struggling with currents, which swept from the east like the constant stream of a river. He often lost in one tack what he had laboriously gained in two, frequently making but two leagues in a day, and never more than five. At night he anchored under the land, through fear of proceeding along an unknown coast in the dark, but was often forced out to sea by the violence of the c u r r e n t s . †In all this time he experienced the same kind of weather that had prevailed on the coast of His paniola, and had attended him more or less for upwards of sixty days. There was, he says, almost an incessant tempest of the heavens, with heavy rains, and such thunder and lightning, that it seemed as if the end of the world was at hand. Those who * Las Casas, lib. ii. cap. 21. Hist. del Almirante, cap. 90. † Hist. del Almirante, cap. 80.