[1] The Account Of This Voyage Is Often Contradictory, And Almost Always Unintelligible.

In this instance, De Leon is made, with a southern course, to increase his latitude almost nine degrees to the north.

- E.

[2] This account of the island of Bimini is perfectly ridiculous, as its whole extent does not exceed twenty miles in length, and not exceeding one mile broad; it is one of the smallest of the Bahama or Lucayo islands, and the largest of them cannot possibly contain any stream of water beyond the size of a brook. - E.

SECTION X.

The Martyrdom of two Dominican Friars on the coast of Venezuela, through the Avarice of the Spaniards.

There happened about this time a very singular and melancholy event, which I find recorded in many Spanish historians, which shews to what a height corruption had grown in so short a time among the Spanish settlements in the West Indies. Reports had reached Spain of the harsh and cruel manner in which the natives were treated by the Spaniards, being distributed among the proprietors of land as if they had been cattle. This moved some religious men of the Dominican order to go over to the new world, to try what progress they could make in converting the Indians by spiritual means only. Three of these fathers landed in the island of Porto Rico, where one of them fell sick and was unable to proceed. The other two procured a vessel to carry them over to the main, where they were landed at no great distance from the Indian town which Hojeda and Vespucius had seen in their first voyage, standing in the water, and which therefore they had named Venezuela or little Venice.

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