WaybackWire

RÍO DE MARES, CUBA.—The Admiral’s envoys have come back from inland with word of a village of 50 houses, but no city. On 1 November he had declared “that this is the mainland, and that I am in front of Zayto and Guinsay”; the people said by signs that their king lived four days’ journey away.

Next day he sent Rodrigo de Jerez of Ayamonte and Luis de Torres, who had been a Jew and knows Hebrew, Chaldee and some Arabic, with two Indians and samples of spices. They were to tell the king that the Sovereigns of Castile had sent the Admiral with letters and a present, in friendship.

They returned on Monday 5 November. After 12 leagues they had reached the village, where a thousand people live many to a house, in houses like very large booths. The chief men led the envoys by the arms to the principal house and gave them two chairs; the people kissed their hands and feet, and the women looked to see whether they were flesh and bones.

Shown cinnamon and pepper, the people said there was plenty a short way to the south-east. Finding no word of any city, the envoys came back. On the road they met “men and women with a half-burnt weed in their hands, being the herbs they are accustomed to smoke”.

RÍO DE MARES, CUBA.—The Admiral is carrying youths, women and children from the Río de Mares to the Sovereigns, to learn Spanish and serve as interpreters on their return.

On Sunday 11 November a canoe with six youths came alongside. “Five came on board, and I ordered them to be detained,” he writes.

He sent to a house on the west side of the river and seized seven women, old and young, and three children. The men, he says, will behave better in Spain with women of their own land, and the women will teach his people their language, the same in all these islands.

That night the husband of one of the women, father of the three children, came out in a canoe and asked to go with them. The Admiral gives him as a man of about 45.

On Saturday 17 November the two eldest of the youths escaped from the Niña.

He also carries Indians taken at Guanahani, whom he wants for Spain. On Tuesday 20 November he would not anchor at Isabella, partly for fear they might get away. He writes: “They thought that, when the Admiral had found gold, he would let them return to their homes.”

SANTA CATALINA, CUBA.—The Admiral has had stones that shine like gold collected near Santa Catalina. “Without doubt, there is in these lands a vast quantity of gold,” he wrote on 12 November.

He saw them on Sunday in the bed of a stream and, remembering that there is gold in the Tagus near the sea, ordered some collected.

At the Río de Mares he saw no gold, though one man had a piece of worked silver fastened to his nose. He ordered nothing taken, so the people would understand he sought only gold, which they call nucay. Old men shown gold and pearls said there was an infinite quantity at Bohio, worn on necks, ears, arms and legs.

The Indians aboard talk much of the island of Babeque, where, he writes, “the people gather the gold on the beach at night with candles, and afterwards beat it into bars with hammers”. He sailed for it on 12 November.

PUERTO DEL PRÍNCIPE, CUBA.—The Admiral is urging the King and Queen to hold these lands for the Faith. “It is very clear that no one before has been so far as this by sea,” he writes.

He finds the people guileless and unwarlike, and urges the Sovereigns to bring these nations into the Church: “if devout religious persons were here, knowing the language, they would all turn Christians”.

He calls the Río de Mares the best port he has yet seen, an excellent site for a town and fort, rich in mastic, cotton and aloes, and the cotton could be sold to the great cities of the Great Khan. A fortress on its high rocky cape would keep merchants safe from other nations, he says, if the place became rich.

On 14 November he came on a deep opening among high, wooded islands too many to count. He believes them the countless islands the maps of the world show in the Far East, rich in stones and spices, and named the sea La Mar de Nuestra Señora and the haven Puerto del Príncipe.

On Tuesday 27 November he wrote: “Your Highnesses ought not to consent that any stranger should trade here, or put his foot in the country, except Catholic Christians.”