Baggert, the housekeeper, told Tom afterward
that the two had a quarrel in the kitchen
as to who should squeeze the lemons, the giant
insisting that he had the better right to "punch"
them.
"So, not to go into too many details," went on
the professor, "I'll just give you a brief outline
of this story of the idol of gold.
"Honduras, as you of course know, is a
republic of Central America, and it gets its name
from something that happened on the fourth
voyage of Columbus. He and his men had had
days of weary sailing and had sought in vain
for shallow water in which they might come to
an anchorage. Finally they reached the point
now known as Cape Gracias-a-Dios, and when
they let the anchor go, and found that in a short
time it came to rest on the floor of the ocean,
some one of the sailors--perhaps Columbus himself--
is said to have remarked:
"`Thank the Lord, we have left the deep
waters (honduras)' that being the Spanish word
for unfathomable depths. So Honduras it was
called, and has been to this day.
"It is a queer land with many traces of an
ancient civilization, a civilization which I
believe dates back farther than some in the far
East. On the sculptured stones in the Copan
valley there are characters which seem to
resemble very ancient writing, but this pictographic
writing is largely untranslatable.
"Honduras, I might add, is about the size of
our state of Ohio. It is rather an elevated table-
land, though there are stretches of tropical
forest, but it is not so tropical a country as many
suppose it to be.
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