76 CAMPS IN THE CARIBBEES. 



youngest and handsomest of the women, and made 

 prisoners of the men, to be killed and eaten. "The 

 admiral learned from them that most of the men of 

 the island were absent, the king having sailed some 

 time before, with ten canoes and three hundred war- 

 riors, on a cruise in quest of prisoners and booty. 

 When the men went forth on these expeditions, the 

 women remained to defend their shores from inva- 

 sion." 



This island of Guadeloupe was their northernmost 

 stronghold. Continuing his cruise northward, to- 

 ward Haspaniola, and coasting the islands, Columbus 

 discovered the last resident Caribs at Santa Cruz. 

 Here a boat's crew of Spaniards attacked an Indian 

 canoe containing several men and women. The fight 

 was long and desperate. Even after the canoe was 

 overturned the Indians fought in the water, "discharg- 

 ing their arrows while swimming, as dexterously as 

 though they had been upon firm land ; and the women 

 fought as fiercely as the men." 



" The hair of these savages was long and coarse ; 

 their eyes were encircled with paint, so as to give 

 them a hideous expression ; and bands of cotton were 

 bound firmly above and below the muscular parts of 

 the arms and legs, so as to cause them to swell to a 

 disproportioned size." Humboldt makes mention of 

 this custom, in vogue among the Caribs of South 

 America, in the early part of the present century. 



" The warlike and unyielding character of these 

 people, so different from that of the pusillanimous 

 nations around them, and the wide scope of their en- 

 terprises and wanderings, like those of the nomad 

 tribes of the Old World, entitle them to distinguished 



