s called here. It is distant about
four hundred miles from Cadiz. While the Court sojourned there the
ninth day of the calends of April, messengers sent to the King and
Queen informed them that twelve ships returning from the islands had
arrived at Cadiz, after a happy voyage. The commander of the squadron
did not wish to say more by the messengers to the King and Queen
except that the Admiral had stopped with five ships and nine hundred
men at Hispaniola, which he wished to explore. He wrote that he would
give further details by word of mouth. The eve of the nones of April,
this commander of the squadron, who was the brother of the nurse of
the eldest royal princes, arrived at Medina, being sent by Columbus. I
questioned him and other trustworthy witnesses, and shall now repeat
what they told me, hoping by so doing to render myself agreeable to
you. What I learned from their mouths you shall now in turn learn from
me.

The third day of the ides of October the Spaniards left the island of
Ferro,[1] which is the most distant of the Canaries from Europe, and
put out upon the high seas in seventeen ships. Twenty-one full days
passed before they saw any land; driven by the north wind they were
carried much farther to the south-west than on the first voyage, and
thus they arrived at the archipelago of the cannibals, or the Caribs,
which we only know from the descriptions given by the islanders. The
first island they discovered was so thickly wooded that there was
not an inch of bare or stony land. As the discovery took place on
a Sunday, the Admiral wished to call the island Domingo.[2] It was
supposed to be deserted, and he did not stop there. He calculated that
they had covered 820 leagues in these twenty-one days. The ships had
always been driven forward by the south-west wind. At some little
distance from Domingo other islands were perceived, covered with
trees, of which the trunks, roots, and leaves exhaled sweet odours.
Those who landed to visit the island found neither men nor animals,
except lizards of extraordinarily great size. This island they called
Galana. From the summit of a promontory, a mountain was visible on
the horizon and thirty miles distant from that mountain a river
of important breadth descended into the plain. This was the first
inhabited land[3] found since leaving the Canaries, but it was
inhabited by those odious cannibals, of whom they had only heard by
report, but have now learned to know, tha