Grijalva Landed With A Competent Number Of Soldiers, Yet
No Person Could Be Found; For The Natives Had Fled On The First Appearance
Of The Ships.
While some went to look out for the inhabitants, Grijalva
caused mass to be celebrated on the shore.
Two old men were found in a
field of maize, who were brought to Grijalva; and as Julian and Melchior
happened to understand their language, Grijalva made much of them, giving
them some beads and looking-glasses, and sent them away to their chief and
countrymen, in hopes of establishing an intercourse with the natives, but
they never returned. While waiting for them, there came a handsome young
woman, who told them in the language of Jamaica, that the people had all
fled into the woods for fear, but that she had come to them, being
acquainted with ships and Spaniards. Many of the people of the ships
understood her language, and were astonished how she could have come to
that island. She said that she had gone out to fish from the island of
Jamaica about two years before, in a canoe with ten men, and had been
driven by a storm and the currents to that island, where the natives had
sacrificed her husband and all the rest of her countrymen to their idols.
Grijalva, beleaving that this woman would be a faithful messenger, sent
her to persuade the natives to come out of the woods, being afraid if he
sent Julian and Melchior that they might not return.
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