348
LIFE A N D VOYAGES OF
[BOOK
XV.
CHAPTER VII. COMMENCEMENT OF A SETTLEMENT ON THE RIVER BELEN. CONSPIRACY OF THE NATIVES.
EXPEDITION OF THE ADE
LANTADO TO SURPRISE QUIBIAN. [1503.]
THE reports brought to Columbus, from every side, of the wealth of the neighborhood ; the golden tract of twenty days' journey in extent, shown to his brother from the mountain ; the rumors of a rich and civilized country at no great distance, all convinced him that he had reached one of the most favored parts of the Asiatic continent. Again his ardent mind kindled up with glow ing anticipations. He fancied himself arrived at a fountain-head of riches, at one of the sources of the unbounded wealth of King Solomon. Josephus, in his work on the antiquities of the Jews, had expressed an opinion, that the gold for the building of the temple of Jerusalem had been procured from the mines of the Aurea Chersonesus. Columbus supposed the mines of Veragua to be the same. They lay, as he observed, “ within the same distance from the pole and from the line ;” and if the information which he fancied he had received from the Indians was to be de pended on, they were situated about the same distance from the Ganges.* * Letter of Columbus from Jamaica.