they assured the governor that they were familiar with it, and that it was called by them tale, though in Cuba the ground in which the yucca grew bore that name. From these two words, according to Bernal Diaz, comes the name Yucatan; for while the governor was speaking to the Indians of yucca and tale, some Spaniards standing by exclaimed, “You see, sir, they call their country Yucatan.”12
The people of this coast seemed to have heard of the Spaniards, for at several places they shouted ‘Castilians!’ and asked the strangers by signs if they did not come from toward the rising sun. Yet, neither the glimpse caught of Yucatan by Pinzon and Solis in 1506 while in search of a strait north of Guanaja Island where Columbus had been, nor the piratical expedition of Córdoba, in 1517, can properly be called the discovery of Mexico.13 Meanwhile Mexico can well afford to wait, being in no haste for European civilization, and the attendant boons which Europe seems so desirous of conferring.