rived there hardly alive, and died from the effects of the wound
he had received from the natives of Uraba. Enciso, the judge elect,
had sailed along this same coast, but with better fortune, for he had
had favourable weather.

He himself told me these things at Court, and he added that the
natives of Cuba had received him kindly, especially the people of a
certain cacique called El Comendador [the Commander]. When this chief
was about to be baptised by some Christians who were passing through,
he asked them how the governor of the neighbouring island of
Hispaniola was called, and he was answered that he was called El
Comendador.[1] The governor of that island was at that period, an
illustrious knight of the Order of Calatrava, and the knights of that
Order take the title of Commander. The cacique promptly declared that
he wished to be called El Comendador; and he it was who had given
hospitality to Enciso, when he landed, and had supplied all his wants.

[Note 1: Don Nicholas de Ovando, Comendador de Lares, and later
Grand Master of the Order of Calatrava.]

According to Enciso, now is the time, Most Holy Father from whom we
receive our religion and our beliefs, to preach to the islanders. An
unknown sailor,[2] who was ill, had been left by some Spaniards who
were coasting the length of Cuba, with the cacique El Comendador, and
this sailor was very kindly received by the cacique and his people.
When he recovered his health, he frequently served the cacique as
lieutenant in his expeditions, for the islanders are often at war one
with another; and El Comendador was always victorious. The sailor
was an ignorant creature, but a man of good heart, who cultivated
a peculiar devotion for the Blessed Virgin, Mother of God. He even
carried about him, as constantly as his clothes, a picture of the
Blessed Virgin, very well painted on paper, and he declared to El
Comendador that it was because of it that he was always victorious.
He also persuaded the latter to abandon the zemes the people adored,
because he declared that these nocturnal goblins were the enemies of
souls, and he urged the cacique to choose for his patron the Virgin
Mother of God, if he desired all his undertakings, both in peace and
in war, to succeed. The Virgin Mother of God was never deaf to the
invocation of her holy name by a pure heart. The sailor obtained a
ready hearing from these naked islanders. Upon the request of the
cacique he gave him the image o