6 The Beginning of British Honduras
der Alvarez de Cabral. Juan Diaz de Solis discovered the Rio
de la Plata, Argentina, in 1514.
 In 1511 a schooner returning from Darien to Hispaniola
was wrecked on the Vipers Rocks, off Jamaica. The crew took
to the ship's boats and after 13 days were drifted by currents
on the Caribbean coast of Yucatan, where some perished from
hunger and exposure, some were promptly sacrificed by the
cannibal natives into whose hands they fell, whilst the two
women who were amongst the 17 survivors were worked to
death crushing maize. Two of the survivors however escaped
from the cages in which prisoners were kept pending sacrifice.
One of these two was Geronimo de Aguilar, whose lot it was
first to be a slave and then a counsellor to the chief of Chete-
mal in the Bakhalal area into whose territory he had fled
to disappoint the stomachs of his first captors.
 In 1517, Hernandez de Cordoba sailed with three vessels
from Cuba to obtain slaves from some of the islands in the
Bay of Honduras. Cordoba had with him .the pilot Juan
Alaminos, who was a native of Palos and had been with
Columbus when he discovered Honduras in 1502. Pinzon
and Solis had brought back a map of this bay to Spain, and
however sketchy and superficial it was, it was now used. This
map made by the cartographer Juan de la Cosa is no longer
extanL. Heavy gales drove Cordoba out of his course, and
after being battered about for three weeks found himself on
a strange and unknown coast. This was the peninsula of
Yucatan, where the fierce Maya Indians had already had news
of the Spanish settlements in the Antilles. When he landed
near Isla Mugeres he found a different race and signs of a
native civilization much higher than that of Cuba and His-
paniola. The fields were better cultivated, the houses were
built of stone and lime, the people wore finely-woven cotton
clothes, and nearly everyone was hostile. In Campeche he
saw temple walls adorned with figures of snakes and painted
idols. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, later the comrade in arms of
Hernan Cortes, 'ok part in this voyage. More was learned