Soon Afterwards, The Boats Returned On
Shore To Bring Off Some Christians Who Had Been Left, And Found Six Women
Who had fled to them from the Caribs, and came off willingly to the ships.
To allure the Indians, the
Admiral would not keep them, but set them on
shore against their wills, giving them some glass beads and bells. This
was not done unadvisedly, for as soon as they landed, the Caribs even in
sight of the Christians, took away all the trinkets which had been given
them. Therefore, either through hatred or fear of the Caribs, when the
boats returned some time afterwards for wood and water, the women got into
them and requested to be carried back to the ships, and gave the seamen to
understand by signs that those people eat men and make slaves of the women,
and therefore they would not remain with them. Yielding to their
entreaties, the seamen brought them back, with two children and a young
man who had escaped from the Caribs; these people thinking themselves
safer in the hands of strangers whom they had never seen or heard of,
than among the cruel and wicked Caribs who had eaten their husbands and
children, but who are said not to eat women, whom they keep as slaves. One
of the women said there were many islands to the south, some inhabited and
others not, which they severally named Giamachi, Cairvaco, Huino, Buriari,
Arubeira, and Sixibei. They said that the continent was very large, and
both they and the inhabitants of Hispaniola named it Zuanta; saying, that
in former times canoes had come from that land to the islands to barter
with abundance of lads, of whom there were two thirds in an island not far
distant[7]. They also said that the king of the island, from which they
fled, was gone with ten large canoes and 300 men to make incursions into
the neighbouring islands to take prisoners to eat.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 157 of 789
Words from 43390 to 43720
of 219607
