If he could but find that strait, he could sail through it into the great Bay of Bengal which, as you know and as he had heard, washes the eastern shore of India.
So he sailed along the coasts of Honduras and Nicaragua trying to find the strait he was hunting for.

Just look at your map and see how near he was to the way across to the Pacific that men are now digging out, and which, as the Nicaragua Canal, will connect the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.

And think how near he was to finding that Pacific Ocean over which, if he could but have got across the Isthmus of Panama, he could have sailed to the Cathay and the Indies he spent his life in trying to find.

But if he had been fortunate enough to get into the waters of the Pacific, I do not believe it would have been so lucky for him, after all.

His little ships, poorly built and poorly provisioned, could never have sailed that great ocean in safety, and the end might have proved even more disastrous than did the Atlantic voyages of the Admiral.
He soon understood that he had found a richer land than the islands he had thus far discovered.