The study

He provides me with study at his plantation in San Domingo and several old maps and texts. My Jesuit teachers would be disappointed that I remember only a little of the Latin they taught me in the seminary. Old Belmiro, the Portuguese navigator who introduced me to his trade, would be slightly more impressed that I can make out the Spanish maps.

Though my research and Ortega’s insistence I able to trace the path of the Caliph’s Tear from Cordoba, Spain where it was part of the riches captured during the reconquest to the New World and the Barrier Islands. The Tear was then stolen in Cordoba and seems to disappear from history only to surface again in the possession of a mad man called “Jacinto of Cordoba”. Jacinto traveled with Hernando de Soto in 1539 along with 600 men in 9 ships to the western coast of Terra Florida to claim more lands for Spain. Log books and rumors state that Jacinto fled the expedition and ran into the wild.