ur being here.
Utias we had and iguana, fish, cassava bread, potato, many a delicious
fruit, and that mild drink that they made. And we had calabashes,
trenchers and fingers, stone knives with which certain officers of the
feast decorously divided the meat, small gourds for cups, water for
cleansing, napkins of broad leaves. It was a great and comely feast. But
before the feast, as in Cuba, the dance.

I should say that three hundred young men and maidens danced. They
advanced, they retreated, they cowered, they pressed forward. They made
supplication, arms to heaven or forehead to ground, they received, they
were grateful, they circled fast in ease of mind, they hungered again
and were filled again, they flowed together, they made a great square,
chanting proudly!

Fray Ignatio beside me glowered, so far as so good a man could
glower. But Juan Lepe said, "It is doubt and difficulty, approach,
reconciliation, holy triumph! They are acting out long pilgrimages and
arrivals at sacred cities and hopes for greater cities. It is much the
same as in Seville or Rome!" Whereupon he looked at me in astonishment,
and Jayme de Marchena said to Juan Lepe, "Hold thy tongue!"

Dance and the feast over, it became the Admiral's turn. He was set not
to seem dejected, not to give any Spaniard nor any Indian reason to say,
"This Genoese--or this god--does not sustain misfortune!" But he
sat calm, pleased with all; brotherly, fatherly, by that big, easy,
contented cacique. Now he would furnish the entertainment! Among us
we had one Diego Minas, a huge man and as mighty a bowman as any in
Flanders or England. Him the Admiral now put forward with his great
crossbow and long arrows. A stir ran around. "Carib! Carib!" We made out
that those mysterious Caribs had bows and arrows, though not great ones
like this. Guacanagari employed gestures and words that Luis Torres and
I strove to understand. We gathered that several times in the memory of
man the Caribs had come in many canoes, warred dreadfully, killed
and taken away. More than that, somewhere in Hayti or Quisquaya or
Hispaniola were certain people who knew the weapon. "Caonabo!" He
repeated the name with respect and disliking. "Caonabo, Caonabo!"
Perhaps the Caribs had made a settlement.

Diego fastened a leaf upon the bark of a tree and from a great distance
transfixed it with an arrow, then in succession sent four others against
the trunk, making precisely the form of a cross. The I