De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) by Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

T >> Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt >> De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2)

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You will ask me, Most Holy Father, what quantity of gold is produced
in this island. Each year Hispaniola alone sends between four and five
hundred thousand gold ducats to Spain. This is known from the fact
that the royal fifth produces eighty, ninety, or a hundred thousand
castellanos of gold, and sometimes even more. I shall explain later on
what may be expected from Cuba and the island of San Juan, which are
equally rich in gold. But we have spoken enough about gold; let us now
pass on to salt, with which whatever we buy with gold is seasoned.

In a district of the province of Bainoa in the mountains of Daiagon,
lying twelve miles from the salt lake of the Caspian, are mines of
rock salt, whiter and more brilliant than crystal, and similar to the
salts which so enrich the province of Laletania, otherwise called
Catalonia, belonging to the Duke of Cardona, who is the chief noble of
that region. People, in a position to compare the two, consider the
salts of Bainoa the richer. It seems that it is necessary to use iron
tools for mining the salt in Catalonia. It also crumbles very easily
as I know by experience, nor is it harder than spongy stone. The
salt of Bainoa is as hard as marble. In the province of Caizcimu and
throughout the territories of Iguanama, Caiacoa, and Quatiaqua springs
of exceptional character are found. At the surface their waters are
fresh, a little deeper down they are salty and at the bottom they
are heavily charged with salt. It is thought that the salt sea-water
partially feeds them, and that the fresh waters on the surface flow
from the mountains through subterranean passages. The salt-waters,
therefore, remain at the bottom while the others rise to the surface,
and the former are not sufficiently strong to entirely corrupt the
latter. The waters of the middle strata are formed by a mixture of the
two others, and share the characteristics of both.

By placing one's ear to the ground near the opening of one of these
springs it is easily perceived that the earth is hollow underneath,
for one may hear the steps of a horseman a distance of three miles and
a man on foot a distance of one mile. It is said there is a district
of _savana_ in the most westerly province of Guaccaiarima, inhabited
by people who only live in caverns and eat nothing but the products
of the forest. They have never been civilised nor had any intercourse
with any other races of men. They live, so it is said, as people did
in the golden age, without fixed homes or crops or culture; neither do
they have a definite language. They are seen from time to time, but it
has never been possible to capture one, for if, whenever they come,
they see anybody other than natives approaching them, they escape with
the celerity of a deer. They are said to be quicker than French dogs.

Give ear, Most Holy Father, to a very amusing exploit of one of these
savages. The Spaniards own cultivated fields along the edge of the
woods and thick forests, which some of them went to visit, as though
on a pleasure trip, in the month of September, 1514. All at once one
of these dumb men suddenly emerged from the woods and smilingly picked
up from the very midst of the Christians a young boy, son of the owner
of the field, whose wife was a native. The savage fled, making signs
that the people should follow him, so several Spaniards and a number
of naked natives ran after the robber, without, however, being able to
catch him. As soon as the facetious savage perceived the Spaniards
had given up the pursuit, he left the child at a crossroads where the
swineherds pass driving herds to pasture. One of these swineherds
recognised the child and taking it in his arms brought it back to the
father, who had been in despair, thinking this savage belonged to the
Carib race, and mourning the child as dead.

Pitch, of a quality much harder and more bitter than that obtained
from trees, is found on the reefs of Hispaniola. It consequently
serves better to protect ships against the gnawings of the worms
called bromas, of which I have elsewhere spoken at length. There are
likewise two pitch-producing trees; one is the pine, and the other
is called _copeo_. I shall say nothing about pines, for they grow
everywhere; but let us speak a little about the copeo tree, and give
a few details about the pitch and the fruit it produces. The pitch is
obtained in the same manner as from pine-trees, though it is described
as being gathered drop by drop from the burning wood. As for the
fruit, it is as small as a plum and quite good to eat; but it is the
foliage of the trees which possesses a very special quality. It is
believed that this tree is the one whose leaves were used by the
Chaldeans, the first inventors of writing, to convey their ideas to
the absent before paper was invented. The leaf is as large as a palm
and almost round. Using a needle or pin, or a sharp iron or wooden
point, characters are traced upon it as easily as upon paper.

It is laughable to consider what the Spaniards have told the natives
concerning these leaves. These good people believe the leaves speak in
obedience to the command of the Spaniards. An islander had been sent
by a Spaniard of Santo Domingo, the capital of Hispaniola, to one
of his friends living in the interior of the colony. The messenger
likewise carried some roasted utias which, as we have said, are
rabbits. On the way, whether from hunger or greediness, he ate three;
these animals not being larger than rats. The friend wrote upon one
of these leaves what he had received. "Well, my man," the master then
said, "you are a fine lad in whom to put confidence! So you have been
so greedy as to eat the utias I gave you?" Trembling and amazed the
native confessed his fault, but asked his master how he had discovered
it. The Spaniard replied: "The leaf which you yourself have brought
me has told me everything. Moreover, you reached my friend's house at
such an hour and you left it at such another." In this way our people
amuse themselves by mystifying these poor islanders, who think they
are gods, with power to make the very leaves reveal what they believe
to be secret. Thus the news spread through the island that the leaves
speak in response to a sign from the Spaniards; and this obliges the
islanders to be very careful of whatever is confided to them. Both
sides of these leaves may be used for writing, just as is the case
with our paper. Such a leaf is thicker than a piece of paper folded in
two, and is extraordinarily tough; so much so that when it is freshly
plucked, the letters stand out white upon a green ground, but when it
dries it becomes white and hard like a piece of wood, and then these
characters change to yellow; but they remain indelible until it is
burnt, never disappearing, even when the leaf is wet.

There is another tree called the _hagua_, whose fruit when green
exudes a juice which dyes so fast everything it touches a greenish
black, that no washing can destroy this colour within twenty days.
When the fruit ripens the juice no longer has this quality; it becomes
edible and has a pleasant taste. There is an herb also, whose smoke
produces death, like the wood which we have mentioned. Some caciques
had decided to kill the Spaniards; but not daring to attack them
openly, they planned to place numerous bunches of this herb in their
houses and set fire to them, so that the Spaniards, who came to
extinguish the flames, would breathe in the smoke with the germs of a
fatal malady. This plot, however, was circumvented and the instigators
of the crime were punished.

Since Your Holiness has deigned to write that you are interested in
everything related concerning the new continent, let us now insert,
irrespective of method, a number of facts. We have sufficiently
explained how maize, agoes, yucca, potatoes, and other edible roots
are sown, cultivated, and used. But we have not yet related how the
Indians learned the properties of these plants; and it is that which
we shall now explain.

BOOK IX

It is said that the early inhabitants of the islands subsisted for a
long time upon roots and palms and magueys. The maguey[1] is a plant
belonging to the class vulgarly called evergreen.

[Note 1: ..._magueiorum quae est herba, sedo sive aizoo, quam
vulgus sempervivam appellat, similis_. (Jovis-barba, joubarbe, etc.)]

The roots of _guiega_ are round like those of our mushrooms, and
somewhat larger. The islanders also eat _guaieros_, which resemble our
parsnips; _cibaios_, which are like nuts; _cibaioes_ and _macoanes_,
both similar to the onion, and many other roots. It is related that
some years later, a bovite, _i.e._, a learned old man, having remarked
a shrub similar to fennel growing upon a bank, transplanted it and
developed therefrom a garden plant. The earliest islanders, who ate
raw yucca, died early; but as the taste is exquisite, they resolved to
try using it in different ways; boiled or roasted this plant is
less dangerous. It finally came to be understood that the juice was
poisonous; extracting this juice, they made from the cooked flour
cazabi, a bread better suited to human stomachs than wheat bread,
because it is more easily digested. The same was the case with other
food stuffs and maize, which they chose amongst the natural products.
Thus it was that Ceres discovered barley and other cereals amongst
the seeds, mixed with slime, brought down by the high Nile from the
mountains of Ethiopia and deposited on the plain when the waters
receded, and propagated their culture.

For having thus indicated the seeds to be cultivated, the ancients
rendered her divine honours. There are numerous varieties of agoes,
distinguishable by their leaves and flowers. One of these species is
called guanagax; both inside and out, it is of a whitish colour. The
guaragua is violet inside and white outside; another species of agoes
is zazaveios, red outside and white inside. Quinetes are white inside
and red outside. The turma is purplish, the hobos yellowish and the
atibunieix has a violet skin and a white pulp. The aniguamar is
likewise violet outside and white inside and the guaccaracca is just
the reverse; white outside and violet inside. There are many other
varieties, upon which we have not yet received any report.

I am aware that in enumerating these species I shall provoke envious
people, who will laugh when my writings reach them, at my sending such
minute particulars to Your Holiness, who is charged with such weighty
interests and on whose shoulders rests the burden of the whole
Christian world. I would like to know from these envious, whether
Pliny and the other sages famous for their science sought, in
communicating similar details to the powerful men of their day, to be
useful only to the princes with whom they corresponded. They mingled
together obscure reports and positive knowledge, great things and
small, generalities and details; to the end that posterity might,
equally with the princes, learn everything together, and also in the
hope that those who crave details and are interested in novelties,
might be able to distinguish between different countries and regions,
the earth's products, national customs, and the nature of things. Let
therefore the envious laugh at the pains I have taken; for my part, I
shall laugh, not at their ignorance, envy, and laziness, but at their
deplorable cleverness, pitying their passions and recommending them to
the serpents from which envy draws its venom. If I may believe what
has been reported to me from Your Holiness by Galeazzo Butrigario and
Giovanni Ruffo, Archbishop of Cosenza, who are the nunzios of your
apostolic chair, I am certain that these details will please you. They
are the latest trappings with which I have dressed, without seeking
to decorate them, admirable things; indications merely and not
descriptions; but you will not reject them. It will repay me to have
burned the midnight oil in your interest, that the recollection of
these discoveries may not be lost. Each takes the money that suits
his purse. When a sheep or a pig is cut up, nothing of it remains by
evening; for one man has taken the shoulder, another the rump, another
the neck, and there are even some who like the tripes and the feet.
But enough of this digression on the subject of envious men and their
fury; let us rather describe how the caciques congratulate their
fellows when a son is born; and how they shape the beginning of their
existence to its end, and why every one of them is pleased to bear
several names.

When a child is born, all the caciques and neighbours assemble and
enter the mother's chamber. The first to arrive salutes the child and
gives it a name, and those who follow do likewise; "Hail, brilliant
lamp," says one; "Hail, thou shining one," says another; or perhaps
"Conqueror of enemies," "Valiant hero," "More resplendent than gold,"
and so on. In this wise the Romans bore the titles of their parents
and ancestors: Adiabenicus, Particus, Armenicus, Dacicus, Germanicus.
The islanders do the same, in adopting the names given them by the
caciques. Take, for instance, Beuchios Anacauchoa, the ruler of
Xaragua, of whom and his sister, the prudent Anacaona, I have already
spoken at length in my First Decade. Beuchios Anacauchoa was also
called _Tareigua Hobin_, which means "prince resplendent as copper."
So likewise _Starei_, which means "shining"; _Huibo_, meaning
"haughtiness"; _Duyheiniquem_, meaning a "rich river." Whenever
Beuchios Anacauchoa publishes an order, or makes his wishes known by
heralds' proclamation, he takes great care to have all these names and
forty more recited. If, through carelessness or neglect, a single one
were omitted, the cacique would feel himself grievously outraged; and
his colleagues share this view.

Let us now examine their peculiar practices when drawing up their last
wills. The caciques choose as heir to their properties, the eldest son
of their sister, if such a one exists; and if the eldest sister has no
son, the child of the second or third sister is chosen. The reason is,
that this child is bound to be of their blood. They do not consider
the children of their wives as legitimate. When there are no children
of their sisters, they choose amongst those of their brothers, and
failing these, they fall back upon their own. If they themselves have
no children, they will their estates to whomsoever in the island is
considered most powerful, that their subjects may be protected by him
against their hereditary enemies. They have as many wives as they
choose, and after the cacique dies the most beloved of his wives is
buried with him. Anacaona, sister of Beuchios Anacauchoa, King of
Xaragua, who was reputed to be talented in the composition of areytos,
that is to say poems, caused to be buried alive with her brother the
most beautiful of his wives or concubines, Guanahattabenecheua; and
she would have buried others but for the intercession of a certain
sandal-shod Franciscan friar, who happened to be present. Throughout
the whole island there was not to be found another woman so beautiful
as Guanahattabenecheua. They buried with her her favourite necklaces
and ornaments, and in each tomb a bottle of water and a morsel of
cazabi bread were deposited.

There is very little rain either in Xaragua, the kingdom of Beuchios
Anacauchoa, or in the Hazua district of the country called Caihibi;
also in the valley of the salt- and fresh-water lakes and in Yacciu, a
district or canton of the province of Bainoa. In all these countries
are ancient ditches, by means of which the islanders irrigate their
fields as intelligently as did the inhabitants of New Carthage, called
Spartana, or those of the kingdom of Murcia, where it rarely rains.
The Maguana divides the provinces of Bainoa from that of Caihibi,
while the Savana divides it from Guaccaiarima. In the deeper valleys
there is a heavier rainfall than the natives require, and the
neighbourhood of Santo Domingo is likewise better watered than is
necessary, but everywhere else the rainfall is moderate. The same
variations of temperature prevail in Hispaniola as in other countries.

I have enumerated in my First Decade the colonies established in
Hispaniola by the Spaniards, and since that time they have founded the
small towns of Porto de la Plata, Porto Real, Lares, Villanova,
Assua, and Salvatiera. Let us now describe these of the innumerable
neighbouring islands which are known and which we have already
compared to the Nereids, daughters of Tethys, and their mother's
ornament. I shall begin with the nearest one, which is remarkable
because of another fountain of Arethusa, but which serves no purpose.
Six miles distant from the coast of the mother island lies an isle
which the Spaniards, ignoring its former name, call Dos Arboles [Two
Trees], because only two trees grow there. It is near them that a
spring, whose waters flow by secret channels under the sea from
Hispaniola, gushes forth, just as Alpheus left Eridus to reappear in
Sicily at the fountain of Arethusa. This fact is established by the
finding of leaves of the _hobis_, mirobolane, and many other trees
growing in Hispaniola, which are carried thither by the stream of this
fountain, for no such trees are found on the smaller island. This
fountain takes its rise in the Yiamiroa River, which flows from the
Guaccaiarima district near the Savana country. The isle is not more
than one mile in circumference, and is used as a fish market.

Towards the east, our Tethys is protected in a manner by the island of
San Juan,[2] which I have elsewhere described. San Juan has rich gold
deposits, and its soil is almost as fertile as that of its mother,
Hispaniola. Colonists have already been taken there, and are engaged
in gold-seeking. On the north-west Tethys is shielded by the great
island of Cuba, which for a long time was regarded as a continent
because of its length. It is much longer than Hispaniola, and is
divided in the middle from east to west by the Tropic of Cancer.
Hispaniola and the other islands lying to the south of Cuba occupy
almost the whole intervening space between the Tropic of Cancer and
the equator. This is the zone which many of the ancients believed to
be depopulated because of the fierce heat of the sun: in which opinion
they were mistaken. It is claimed that mines, richer than those of
Hispaniola, have been found in Cuba and at the present writing it is
asserted that gold to the value of one hundred and eighty thousand
castellanos has been obtained there and converted into ingots;
certainly a positive proof of opulence.

[Note 2: Porto Rico.]

Jamaica lies still farther to the south and is a prosperous, fertile
island, of exceptional fecundity, in which, however, there does not
exist a single mountain. It is adapted to every kind of cultivation.
Its inhabitants are formidable because of their warlike temperament.
It is impossible to establish authority within the brief period since
its occupation. Columbus, the first discoverer, formerly compared
Jamaica to Sicily in point of size, but as a matter of fact it is
somewhat smaller, though not much. This is the opinion of those who
have carefully explored it. All these people agree as to its inviting
character. It is believed that neither gold nor precious stones will
be found there; but in the beginning the same opinion was held of
Cuba.

The island of Guadaloupe, formerly called by the natives Caraqueira,
lies south of Hispaniola, four degrees nearer to the equator. It is
thirty-five miles in circumference and its coast line is broken by two
gulfs, which almost divide it into two different islands, as is the
case with Great Britain and Caledonia, now called Scotland. It has
numerous ports. A kind of gum called by the apothecaries _animen
album_, whose fumes cure headaches, is gathered there. The fruit of
this tree is one palm long and looks like a carrot. When opened it is
found to contain a sweetish flour, and the islanders preserve these
fruits just as our peasants lay by a store of chestnuts and other
similar things for the winter. The tree itself might be a fig-tree.
The edible pineapple and other foods which I have carefully studied
above also grow in Guadaloupe, and it is even supposed that it was the
inhabitants of this island who originally carried the seeds of all
these delicious fruits to the other islands.

In conducting their man-hunts, the Caribs have scoured all the
neighbouring countries; and whatever they found that was likely to be
useful to them, they brought back for cultivation. These islanders
are inhospitable and suspicious, and their conquest can only be
accomplished by using force. Both sexes use poisoned arrows and are
very good shots; so that, whenever the men leave the island on an
expedition, the women defend themselves with masculine courage against
any assailants. It is no doubt this fact that has given rise to the
exploded belief that there are islands in this ocean peopled entirely
by women. The Admiral Columbus induced me to believe this tale and I
repeated it in my First Decade.

In the island of Guadaloupe there are mountains and fertile plains;
it is watered by beautiful streams. Honey is found in the trees and
crevices of the rocks, and, as is the case at Palma, one of the
Fortunate Isles, honey is gathered amongst briar and bramble bushes.

The island recently named La Deseada lies eighteen miles distant from
the former island, and is twenty miles in circumference.

There is another charming island lying ten miles to the south of
Guadaloupe, which is called Galante; its surface is level and it is
thirty miles in circumference. Its name was suggested by its beauty,
for, in the Spanish, dandies are called _galanes_.[3]

[Note 3: The island was, in reality, named after one of the ships
of Columbus.]

Nine miles to the east of Guadaloupe lie six other islands called
Todos Santos and Barbadas. These are only barren reefs, but mariners
are obliged to know them. Thirty-five miles north of Guadaloupe looms
the island called Montserrat, which is forty miles in circumference,
and is dominated by a very lofty mountain. An island called Antigua,
thirty miles distant from Guadaloupe, has a circumference of about
forty miles.

The Admiral Diego Columbus, son of the discoverer, told me that when
obliged to go to court he left his wife in Hispaniola, and that she
had written him that an island with rich gold deposits had been
discovered in the midst of the archipelago of the Caribs, but that it
had not yet been visited. Off the left coast of Hispaniola there lies
to the south and near to the port of Beata an island called Alta Vela.
Most astonishing things are told concerning sea monsters found there,
especially about the turtles, which are, so it is said, larger than a
large breast shield. When the breeding time arrives they come out of
the sea, and dig a deep hole in the sand, in which they deposit three
or four hundred eggs. When all their eggs are laid, they cover up the
hole with a quantity of earth sufficient to hide them, and go back to
their feeding grounds in the sea, without paying further heed to their
progeny. When the day, fixed by nature, for the birth of these
animals arrives, a swarm of turtles comes into the world, without the
assistance of their progenitors, and only aided by the sun's rays. It
looks like an ant-hill. The eggs are almost as large as those of a
goose, and the flavour of turtle meat is compared to veal.

There is a large number of other islands, but they are as yet unknown,
and moreover it is not required to sift al1 this meal so carefully
through the sieve. It is sufficient to know that we have in our
control immense countries where, in the course of centuries, our
compatriots, our language, our morals, and our religion will flourish.
It was not from one day to another that the Teucrians peopled Asia,
the Tyrians Libya, or the Greeks and Phoenicians Spain.

I do not mention the islands which protect the north of Hispaniola;
they have extensive fisheries and might be cultivated, but the
Spaniards avoid them because they are poor. And now adieu, ancient
Tethys:

Jam valeant annosa Tethys, nymphaeque madentes,
Ipsius comites; veniat coronata superbe
Australis pelagi cultrix, re ac nomine dives.[4]

[Note 4: The following English translation for these lines has
been suggested:

Farewell, old Tethys, ocean goddess old;
Farewell thy company, the Nereid band;
And come thou, rich in name and pearls and gold
Crowned royally, Queen of the Southern strand.]

In the volume of letters I sent Your Holiness last year, by one of my
servants, and which Your Holiness has read in its entirety before the
Cardinals of the Apostolic See and your beloved sister, I related that
on the same day the Church celebrates the feast of St. Michael the
Archangel, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the leader of the men who had
crossed the lofty mountain chain, had been told that an island
remarkable for the size of its pearls lay within sight of the coast
and that its king was rich and powerful and often made war against the
caciques whose states lay on the coast, especially Chiapes and Tumaco.
We have written that the Spaniards did not attack the island because
of the great storms which render that South Sea dangerous, during
three months of the year. This island has now been conquered and we
have tamed its proud cacique. May Your Holiness deign to accept him
and all his rich principalities, since he has now received the waters
of baptism. It will not be out of place to remember under whose orders
and by whom this conquest was effected. May Your Holiness attend with
serene brow and benignant ear to the account of this enterprise.

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