Florida would naturally occupy the larger Antilles
before traveling east and southward. Under this hypothesis, as we have
said, all the inhabitants of the Antilles would be Caribs, but in that
case the difference in the character of the inhabitants of the two
divisions of the archipelago would have to be accounted for.

Most of the evidence we have been able to collect on this subject
points to a south-continental origin of the Caribs. On the maps of
America, published in 1587 by Abraham Ortellus, of Antwerp, in 1626 by
John Speed, of London, and in 1656 by Sanson d'Abbeville in Paris, the
whole region to the north of the Orinoco is marked Caribana. In the
history of the Dutch occupation of Guiana we read that hostile Caribs
occupied a shelter[93] constructed in 1684 by the governor on the
borders of the Barima, which shows that the vast region along the
Orinoco and its tributaries, as well as the lesser Antilles, was
inhabited by an ethnologically identical race.

* * * * *

Were the Caribs cannibals? This question has been controverted as much
as that of their origin, and with the same doubtful result.

The only testimony upon which the assumption that the Caribs were
cannibals is founded is that of the companions of Columbus on his
second voyage, when, landing at Guadeloupe, they found human bones and
skulls in the deserted huts. No other evidence of cannibalism of a
positive character was ever after obtained, so that the belief in it
rests exclusively upon Chanca's narrative of what the Spaniards saw
and learned during the few days of their stay among the islands. Their
imagination could not but be much excited by the sight of what the
doctor describes as "infinite quantities" of bones of human
creatures, who, they took for granted, had been devoured, and of
skulls hanging on the walls by way of receptacles for curios. It was
the age of universal credulity, and for more than a century after the
most absurd tales with regard to the people and things of the
mysterious new continent found ready credence even among men of
science. Columbus, in his letter to Santangel (February, 1493),
describing the different islands and people, wrote: "I have not yet
seen any of the human monsters that are supposed to exist here." The
descriptions of the customs of the natives of the newly discovered
islands which Dr. Chanca sent to the town council of Seville were
unquestioned by them, and afterward