island, which was extremely verdant and fertile. The inhabitants resembled
those of other islands, excepting that their foreheads were narrower.
While the Adelantado was on shore, he beheld a great canoe arriving, as
from a distant and important voyage. He was struck with its magnitude and
contents. It was eight feet wide, and as long as a galley, though formed
of the trunk of a single tree. In the centre was a kind of awning or cabin
of palm-leaves, after the manner of those in the gondolas of Venice, and
sufficiently close to exclude both sun and rain. Under this sat a cacique
with his wives and children. Twenty-five Indians rowed the canoe, and it
was filled with all kinds of articles of the manufacture and natural
production of the adjacent countries. It is supposed that this bark had
come from the province of Yucatan, which is about forty leagues distant
from this island.

The Indians in the canoe appeared to have no fear of the Spaniards, and
readily went alongside of the admiral's caravel. Columbus was overjoyed at
thus having brought to him at once, without trouble or danger, a
collection of specimens of all the important articles of this part of the
New World. He examined, with great curiosity and interest, the contents of
the canoe. Among various utensils and weapons similar to those already
found among the natives, he perceived others of a much superior kind.
There were hatchets for cutting wood, formed not of stone but copper;
wooden swords, with channels on each side of the blade, in which sharp
flints were firmly fixed by cords made of the intestines of fishes; being
the same kind of weapon afterwards found among the Mexicans. There were
copper bells and other articles of the same metal, together with a rude
kind of crucible in which to melt it; various vessels and utensils neatly
formed of clay, of marble, and of hard wood; sheets and mantles of cotton,
worked and dyed with various colors; great quantities of cacao, a fruit as
yet unknown to the Spaniards, but which, as they soon found, the natives