4 The Beginning of British Honduras
 The region now called British Honduras was discovered
between December 1506 and March 1507 by the two Spanish
navigators Vicente Yanez Pinzon and Juan Diaz de Solis4 In
three caravels they sailed westward from Guanaja, skirted the
coast to the south, then entered what is now the Gulf of
Honduras, which Pinzon called Bahia de Navidad, and con-
tinued still farther to the west right up to the Rio Dulce.
With them was the pilot Pedro Ledesma, who had been with
Columbus in 1502, when he touched at Guanaja and landed
at Punta Casinas. Herrera y Tordesillas points out in his
history that this point was so named by the Admiral on ac-
count of its having many trees whose fruit are a kind of small
apples that are good to eat and are called "casinas" in the
language of the aboriginals. This is the sapodilla tree.
 It can be assumed with certainty that Pinzon and Solis gave
the name "Navidad" because they arrived here at Christmas
time. They remained at anchor for about three months, bar-
tering with the natives and looking for the waterway to the
Spice Islands. Then there was not a single coconut tree in
the Bay of Honduras. Huge mahogany, tubroose, and sapo-
dilla trees grew on the seacoast and many of the cayes, whilst
at Monkey River the loud snoring of the baboons attracted
the gaze of the inquiring Spaniards. In the neighbourhood
of the Sittee River, Pinzon and Solis met many of the Moskito
Indians, comparatively new-comers who were established on
the Cockscomb Coast perhaps only three hundred years and
whose raids had caused the Maya settlements on the coast to
be abandoned. These Indians, who like the Caribs of the
Antilles came originally from the Orinoco and Essiquibo
area lived mainly on the numerous turtles, iguana lizards,
and birds' eggs that then abounded on the cayes. Like the
Peruvians of Incaic times, the concept money was unknown
to them. They knew only the concept value, and this they
used in bartering with their Spanish visitors.
 On sailing out of the gulf in 1507, Pinzon and Solis went
north towards Cape Catoche in Yucatan and returned to