fter which the Grand Canary,
followed by Teneriffe: Gomera lies a short distance to the north
of Teneriffe and the islands of Palma and Ferro seem to form a
rear-guard. After a voyage of eight days, Pedro Arias landed at
Gomera. His fleet consisted of seventeen vessels, carrying fifteen
hundred men, to which number he had been restricted; for he left
behind him more than two thousand discontented and disconsolate men,
who begged to be allowed to embark at their own expense; such was
their avidity for gold and such their desire to behold the new
continent.

Pedro Arias stopped sixteen days at Gomera, to take on a supply of
wood and water, and to repair his ships damaged by a storm, especially
the flag-ship, which had lost her rudder. The archipelago of the
Canaries is indeed a most convenient port for navigators. The
expedition left the Canaries the nones of May, and saw no land until
the third day of the nones of June, when the ships approached the
island of the man-eating cannibals which has been named Domingo. On
this island, which is about eight hundred leagues from Gomera, Pedro
Arias remained four days and replenished his supply of water and wood.
Not a man or a trace of a human being was discovered. Along the coast
were many crabs and huge lizards. The course afterwards passed by the
islands of Madanino and Guadeloupe and Maria Galante, of which I have
spoken at length in my First Decade. Pedro Arias also sailed over vast
stretches of water full of grass[2]; neither the Admiral, Columbus,
who first discovered these lands and crossed this sea of grass, nor
the Spaniards accompanying Pedro Arias are able to explain the cause
of this growth. Some people think the sea is muddy thereabouts and
the grasses, growing on the bottom, reach to the surface; similar
phenomena being observed in lakes and large rivers of running waters.
Others do not think that the grasses grow in that sea, but are torn up
by storms from the numerous reefs and afterwards float about; but it
is impossible to prove anything because it is not known yet whether
they fasten themselves to the prows of the ships they follow or
whether they float after being pulled up. I am inclined to believe
they grow in those waters, otherwise the ships would collect them
in their course,--just as brooms gather up all the rubbish in the
house,--which would thus delay their progress.

[Note 2: The _Mare Sargassum_ of the ancients: also called _Fucus
Natans_, and by