Spanish Discovery 13

sequent colonists who worked the gold mines of Honduras
which were very rich.
 On nearing the coast Cortes wished to take by surprise the
little Spanish settlement of San Gil de Buenavista which Gil
Gonzales had founded at the mouth of the Golfo Dulce, in
the area called "Las Hibueras," because of the number of
calabashess" floating about the Gulf. A local name of this
marine nut which resembles a large fig is still here in the
name Cocolis Point. Cortes fell in with a party of its starving
settlers searching for food in the forest, and shortly thereafter
both groups were pleased to welcome a caravel most oppor-
tunely arriving with much needed supplies from Cuba for
the settlers. A detachment of Cortes' men explored the coast
to the north and entered what is now the Punta Ycacos
Lagoon. Cortes then left San Gil de Buenavista taking with
him some four dozen pale and sickly men and women of Gil
Gonzales' colony and founded a new settlement at Puerto
Caballos, or La Natividad de Nuestra Senora, the spot where
Gil Gonzales had thrown the seventeen dead horses into the
sea when he arrived in the spring of 1524. Then Cortes went
to Truxillo, founded by Francisco de las Casas, and from
there he returned to Mexico by water, thus making a com-
plete circle around what is now British Honduras.
 The fathers of these conquerors had fought in that long
series of wars which ended with expulsion of the Moors from
Spain. Religious zeal was strong in their adventurous sons,
and they were ever desirous of converting the Indians to the
Roman Catholic faith. Jealousy of Spain's wealth and power
made her for a long time the whipping-boy of many writers
who often show a lack of familiarity with the strong individ-
ualism in the Spanish character. In Spanish literature and
painting of the Siglo de Oro it is plainly seen, and so the
manner in which the New World was overrun in the first
half of the sixteenth century is thoroughly Spanish in the
reflexion of individual ambitions rather than such as are
meant to serve the community. Such were the forerunners of