this voyage is mentioned as the spice of the West Indies; probably
either pimento or capsicum, and used as a condiment to relish the
insipidity of the casada.--E.

[8] The meaning of this term is nowhere explained in this voyage: but in
the account of the discovery of America by Herrera, it is said to
signify pale gold. From its application in the text, it is probably
the Indian name of gold, the perpetual object of inquiry by the
Spaniards.--E.

[9] Such absurd fables have in all ages been the consequence of credulous
intercourse of ill-informed men, ignorant of the languages of newly
discovered nations. The Amazons of antiquity are here supposed to be
rediscovered; but were afterwards transferred to the interior marshy
plains of South America.--E.

[10] The author probably alludes here to the various-shaped pods of
different species or varieties of capsicum.--E.

SECTION VI.

_Second Voyage of Columbus to the West Indies_.

Orders were issued from Barcelona to prepare with all care and expedition
for the return of the admiral to Hispaniola, as well to relieve those
Christians who had been left there as to enlarge the colony and subdue the
island, with the rest that were and should be discovered. To strengthen
and confirm their title to the newly discovered regions, their Catholic
majesties by the advice of the admiral, procured the approbation and
consent of the pope for the conquest of the Indies, which was readily
granted by Alexander VI, who then governed the church; and the bull to
this effect was not only for what was already discovered, but for all that
might be discovered westwards, until they should come to the _East_, where
any Christian prince was then actually in possession, and forbidding all
persons whomsoever to intrude within these bounds. And this concession and
exclusive right was again confirmed in the year following in the most
ample terms. Sensible that all this favourable grant from the pope was due
to the admiral, by whose discovery they had become entitled to the
possession of all these parts, their majesties were pleased, on the
twenty-eighth of May, at Barcelona, to ratify, renew, confirm, and explain
the privileges and prerogatives which they had granted him before, by
granting them of new, so as explicitly to define how far the bounds of his
admiralty and viceroyalty extended, being over all which had been granted
to them by his ho