For three days the course lay to the south-west along the shore.

The panorama that was unfolded to the eye of the explorer was cheerless.

The wind blew cold and hard from the north-east.

The weather was dark and gloomy, while through the rifts of the mist and fog that lay heavy on the face of the waters there appeared only a forbidding and scarcely habitable coast.
Low lands with islands fringed the shore.

Behind them great mountains, hacked and furrowed in their outline, offered an uninviting prospect.
There was here no Eldorado such as, farther south, met the covetous gaze of a Cortez or a Pizarro, no land of promise luxuriant with the vegetation of the tropics such as had greeted the eyes of Columbus at his first vision of the Indies.