They said the people, of that country, lived in the mountains.
Here Columbus noticed the fact,--one which has given to philologists one of their central difficulties for four hundred years since,--that as he passed from one point to another of the American shores, the Indians did not understand each other's language.

"Every ten or twenty leagues they did not understand each other." In entering the river Veragua, the Indians appeared armed with lances and arrows, some of them having gold also.

Here, also, the people did not live upon the shore, but two or three leagues back in the interior, and they only came to the sea by their canoes upon the rivers.
The next province was then called Cobraba, but Columbus made no landing for want of a proper harbor.

All his courses since he struck the continent had been in a southeasterly direction.

That an expedition for westward discovery should be sailing eastward, seemed in itself a contradiction.