The proposal being duly made to the assembled crews, every one, as
cunning Mendez had thought, declares it impossible; every one hangs back.
Upon which Diego Mendez with a fine gesture comes forward and volunteers;
makes his little dramatic effect and has his little ovation. Thoroughly
Spanish this, significant of that mixture of vanity and bravery, of
swagger and fearlessness, which is characteristic of the best in Spain.
It was a desperately brave thing to venture upon, this voyage from
Jamaica to Espanola in a native canoe and across a sea visited by
dreadful hurricanes; and the volunteer was entitled to his little piece
of heroic drama.

While Mendez was making his preparations, putting a false keel on the
canoe and fixing weather boards along its gunwales to prevent its
shipping seas, fitting a mast and sail and giving it a coat of tar, the
Admiral retired into his cabin and busied himself with his pen. He wrote
one letter to Ovando briefly describing his circumstances and requesting
that a ship should be sent for his relief; and another to the Sovereigns,
in which a long rambling account was given of the events of the voyage,
and much other matter besides, dismally eloquent of his floundering in
the quag. Much in it--about Solomon and Josephus, of the Abbot Joachim,
of Saint Jerome and the Great Khan; more about the Holy Sepulchre and the
intentions of the Almighty in that matter; with some serious practical
concern for the rich land of Veragua which he had discovered, lest it
should share the fate of his other discoveries and be eaten up by idle
adventurers. "Veragua," he says, "is not a little son which may be given
to a stepmother to nurse. Of Espanola and Paria and all the other lands
I never think without the tears falling from my eyes; I believe that the
example of these ought to serve for the others." And then this passage: