These Islands Lay So Thick And Close Together, That
Most Of Them Were Only A Musket-Shot Asunder, And The Farthest Not More
Than The Quarter Of A League.
The channels between these islands were so
deep, and the shores so beautifully adorned with trees and plants of
infinite varieties, that it was quite delightful to sail among them.
Among
the multitude of other trees, there were great numbers of mastic, aloes,
and palms, with long smooth green trunks, and other plants innumerable.
Though these islands were not inhabited, there were seen the remains of
many fires which had been made by the fishermen; for it appeared
afterwards, that the people of Cuba were in use to go over in great
numbers in their canoes to these islands, and to a great number of other
uninhabited islets in these seas, to live upon fish, which they catch in
great abundance, and upon birds, crabs, and other things which they find
on the land. The Indians are by no means nice in their choice of food, but
eat many things which are abhorred by us Europeans, such as large spiders,
the worms that breed in rotten wood and other corrupt places, and devour
their fish almost raw; for before roasting a fish, they scoop out the eyes
and eat them. The Indians follow this employment of fishing and
bird-catching according to the seasons, sometimes in one island, sometimes
in another, as a person changes his diet when weary of living on one kind
of food.
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