l
understand it, for I observed that they were as green and luxuriant as
in Spain in the month of May. Some were in bloom, others bearing fruit,
and others otherwise, according to their nature. The nightingale was
singing as well as other birds of a thousand different kinds; and that
in November, the month in which I myself was roaming amongst them. There
are palm trees of six or eight kinds, wonderful in their beautiful
variety; but this is the case with all the other trees and fruits and
grasses; trees, plants, or fruits filled us with admiration. It contains
extraordinary pine groves and very extensive plains. There is also
honey, a great variety of birds, and many different kinds of fruits. In
the interior there are many mines of metals and a population
innumerable. Espanola is a wonder. Its mountains and plains, and meadows
and fields, are so beautiful and rich for planting and sowing, and
rearing cattle of all kinds, and for building towns and villages. The
harbors on the coast, and the number and size and wholesomeness of the
rivers, most of them bearing gold, surpass anything that would be
believed by one who had not seen them. There is a great difference
between the trees, fruits, and plants of this island and those of Juana.
In this island there are many spices and extensive mines of gold and
other metals. The inhabitants of this and of all the other islands I
have found or gained intelligence of, both men and women, go as naked as
they were born, with the exception that some of the women cover one part
only with a single leaf of grass or with a piece of cotton made for
that purpose. They have neither iron nor steel nor arms, nor are they
competent to use them; not that they are not well-formed and of handsome
stature, but because they are timid to a surprising degree. Their only
arms are reeds, cut in the seeding time,_[17] _to which they fasten
small sharpened sticks, and even these they dare not use; for on several
occasions it has happened that I have sent ashore two or three men to
some village to hold a parley, and the people have come out in countless
numbers, but as soon as they saw our men approach, would flee with such
precipitation that a father would not even stop to protect his son; and
this not because any harm had been done to any of them, for from the
first, wherever I went and got speech with them, I gave them of all that
I had, such as cloth and many other things, without receiving anything
in