We Followed Them As Quickly As Possible, Wading Up To Our Middles In The Sea, And Rescued The Boat, After Killing Twenty-Two Of The Indians, And Making Prisoners Of Three Who Were Only Slightly Wounded, Yet Died Afterwards During Our Voyage To Cuba.

After the natives were driven away, we inquired of the soldier who gave us the alarm of the enemy, what had become of his comrade?

He reported, that a short time before he came to us, his companion went to the water side to cut down a palmito, and soon afterwards, hearing him cry out, being as he supposed in the hands of the enemy, he ran towards us and gave the alarm. The soldier thus amissing, named Berrio, was the only person who escaped from Pontonchan unwounded. We went to seek for him, and found the palmito he had begun to cut, around which the ground was much trodden, but no trace of blood, from which we concluded he had been carried away alive. Having sought him in vain for an hour, we returned on board with the water, to the infinite joy of our companions, who were quite beside themselves on its arrival. One man leapt into the boat immediately on its getting along-side, and never ceased drinking till he died. We next proceeded to a certain low island called los Baxos de los Martyres, where our commanders ship struck on a sunken rock, and took in so much water that she was near sinking; indeed we greatly feared that our utmost exertions at the pump could not bring her into port. When two of our sailors, who were from the Levant, were called upon to aid in pumping, they calmly replied facetelo vos, or Do it yourselves, when we were almost exhausted by fatigue, and the ship on the very point of going down. We compelled them, however, to fall to, and by the blessing of GOD we got safe to the harbour then called Puerto de Carenas, where the city of Havanna has been since built. Our captain went immediately to his estate near Spiritu Santo, where he died in ten days, and three soldiers died of their wounds at the Havanna, and the rest dispersed to their different homes or avocations.

Immediately after our arrival, an express was sent to Velasquez the governor of Cuba, informing him that we had discovered a country having houses of stone and lime, where the inhabitants were decently clothed, cultivating maize, and possessing gold; and the fame of our discovery was soon spread through the island, by the soldiers and mariners who had returned from the expedition. On producing the figures and idols which we had brought over, it was believed that they had been brought to that country by a Jewish colony, flying after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus and Vespasian[2]. The name of Yucutan, which that country we discovered acquired at this time, was occasioned by the following mistake. Yuca in the language of the country is the name of the plant used in the islands for bread, there named cazabi, and tale in the same language signifies the heap of earth on which it is planted.

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