CHAP, in.] WEST INDIES. 59 



CHAPTER III. 



Of tJ\e Natives of Hispaimla, Cuba, Jamaica, and Porto- 

 Rico. Their Origin. Num bers. Persons. Genius and 

 Dispositions. Government and Religion. Miscellaneous 

 Observations respecting their Arts, Manufactures and 

 Agriculture. Cruelty of the Spaniards, Kc. 



I AM now to give some account of a mild and 

 comparatively cultivated people, the ancient na- 

 tives of Hispaniola, Cuba,|| Jamaica, and Porto- 

 Rico;* for there is no doubt that the inhabitants of 

 all those islands were of one common origin., speak- 

 ing the same language, possessing the same institu- 

 tions, and practising similar superstitions. Columbus 

 himself treats of them as such 3 and the testimony of 



Hispaniola was called by the natives Haiti or Ayti, which signifies 

 mountainous j and I conceive the same word has the same meaning in the 

 islands of the south sea. 



(I C##was the Indian name. If was not discovered to be an island un- 

 til the year 1508, when a captain, named Sebastian, sailed round it by or- 

 der of Nicholas Ovando. It was first planted by the Spaniards in i 51 1 j 

 in that year Jago Velasquez went thither with three hundred men, and 

 settled on the south coast, near to a port which he called by his own 

 name, {Jago, a name it still bears), and which for extent and security 

 may be reckoned one of the finest in the world. 



* The Indian name of Porto-Rico was BoriqtteK. It was discovered by 

 Columbus in his second voyage, but first explored by Juan F/once de 

 Leon, in 1508. 



