the inhabitants of that country
were cannibals. It was not, however, entirely clear whether they meant
cannibals or savage beasts. They were much vexed to perceive that the
Spaniards did not understand them, and that they possessed no means of
making themselves intelligible to one another. At three o'clock in
the afternoon the men who had been sent on shore returned, bringing
several strings of pearls, and the Admiral, who could not prolong his
stay, because of his cargo of provisions, raised anchor and sailed. He
intends, however, after putting the affairs of Hispaniola in order,
shortly to return. It was another than he who profited by this
important discovery.

The shallowness of the sea and the numerous currents, which at each
change of the tide dashed against and injured the lesser vessels,
much retarded the Admiral's progress, and to avoid the perils of the
shallows he always sent one of the lighter caravels ahead; this vessel
being of short draught took repeated soundings and the other larger
ones followed. At that time two provinces of the vast region of Paria,
Cumana and Manacapana, were reached, and along their shores the
Admiral coasted for two hundred miles. Sixty leagues farther on begins
another country called Curiana. As the Admiral had already covered
such a distance, he thought the land lying ahead of him was an island,
and that if he continued his course to the west he would be unable to
get back to the north and reach Hispaniola. It was then that he came
upon the mouth of a river whose depth was thirty cubits, with an
unheard-of width which he described as twenty-eight leagues. A little
farther on, always in a westerly direction though somewhat to the
south, since he followed the line of the coast, the Admiral sailed
into a sea of grass of which the seeds resemble those of the lentil.
The density of this growth retarded the advance of the ships.

The Admiral declares that in the whole of that region the day
constantly equals the night. The north star is elevated as in Paria
to five degrees above the horizon, and all the coasts of that newly
discovered country are on the same parallel. He likewise reports
details concerning the differences he observed in the heavens, which
are so contradictory to astronomical theories that I wish to make some
comments. It is proven, Most Illustrious Prince, that the polar star,
which our sailors call Tramontane, is not the point of the arctic pole
upon which the axis