70 



with the art) to be woven into good cloth ; there are so many of 

 these trees that we might load the caravels with wool, although it 

 is troublesome to collect, for the trees are very thorny, but some 

 means may be easily found of overcoming this difficulty. There 

 are also cotton trees as large as peach trees which produce cotton 

 in the greatest abundance." 



The editor of these letters adds as a foot note after " very 

 thorny" ("muy espinosos") : "A species of the natural order 

 Bombacaceae ; perhaps the Eriodendron anfractuosum." The " muy 

 espinosus" in connection with a wool-bearing tree of Santo Do- 

 mingo is of especial significance. Ochroma and perhaps other- 

 native trees of the West Indian region " bear wool," but none of 

 them but Ceiba pentandra, so far as we know, is spiny. 



Columbus relates in the account of his first voyoge that many 

 canoes were found in use by the inhabitants of the islands visited 

 and that these canoes were made of a single piece of timber. The 

 largest of these is referred to in the journal of Columbus for Fri- 

 day, November 30, 1492, at which time the explorers were at 

 Puerto Santo [Puerto de Baracoa] near the eastern end of Cuba ; 

 this canoe, dug out of a single tree, was 95 palmos (spans) long 

 and capable of carrying 1 50 persons. In parts of ancient Spanish 

 America, ceiba, ceyba or seiba (written " seiba" in the older docu- 

 ments of Cuba)* was a native namef for canoe and also for a cer- 

 tain large tree ; and many of the older writers} associate these 

 large canoes with the tree now known as Ceiba pentandra. While 

 possibly this is not the only kind of tree now growing in the 

 West Indian Islands which has a trunk sufficiently large for the 

 making of such great canoes, we have the testimony also of vari- 

 ous later writers§ that the trunks of the Ceiba are used for making 

 canoes, and Mr. Norman Taylor, whose return from a recent visit 

 to the Sierra Maestra near Santiago, Cuba, has been referred to 

 above, tells the present writer that he saw dug-out canoes made 

 from the trunks of this tree now in actual use in that region. 

 Professor L. M. Underwood in the course of his visits to Jamaica 

 has been told that canoes are there also still made from the Ceiba. 



The first historian of the New World, or at least the first who 

 described the trees in much detail, was Gonzalo Fernandez de 

 Oviedo y Valdes, who from 1 5 14 to 1556 served in various capaci- 

 ties as an officer of the Spanish government in Darien, Cartagena, 

 Nicaragua, and Espanola (Santo Domingo or Haiti). In 1526, he 

 published a " Sumario de la natural y general historia de las In- 

 dias," in the course of which he remarks that " the largest tree 

 that I have seen in these parts or in others was in the province of 

 Guaturo.ll" (He had been speaking of the " Tierra-Firme" and 

 " Darien" and this province was doubtless in the region of the 

 Isthmus.) This great tree had "three roots or parts in a triangle 



* A. Biichiller y Morales, Cuba primitiva, 242. 1883. 

 t A. HachilLir y Momles, I.e. 234. 

 t Sloane, Nat. Hist, Jam. 2: 72-75. 1725. 

 § Eg., Groaourdy, Mel. Bot Griollo, 2 : 375. 18H4. 



HEdit'ion seen a reprint in Bibliotica de Autores Espaiioles 22 : 504. Madrid, 

 1884. 



