214 THE BIO SI3F. 



lands I hare visited : they have one fault, however, that 

 having too frequent intercourse with the devil." 



The Bio Sinn, owing to its position and its fertility, is of 

 the highest importance for provisioning Carthagena. lu 

 time of war, the enemy usually stationed their ships between 

 the Morro de Tigua and the Boca de Matunilla, to intercept 

 oarques laden with provisions. In that station, they were, 

 however, sometimes exposed to the attack of the gun-boats 

 of Carthagena : these gun-boats can pass through the channel 

 of Pasacaballos, which, near Saint Anne, separates the isle 

 of Baru from the continent. Lorica has, since the sixteenth 

 century, been the principal town of Rio Sinu ; but its popu- 

 lation, which, in 1778, under the government of Don Juan 

 Diaz Pimienta, amounted to 4000 souls, has considerably 

 diminished, because nothing has been done to secure the 

 town from inundations and the deleterious iniasinata they 

 produce. 



a question of morals than of race, and the denomination of Caribs is 

 altogether avoided. Ciega asserts that the natives of the valley of Nore 

 seized the women of neighbouring tribes, in order first to devour the 

 children who were born of the union with foreign wives, and then the 

 women themselves. Foreseeing that this horrible depravity would not be 

 believed, although it had been observed by Columbus in the West indies, 

 be cites the testimony of Juan de Vadillo, who had observed the same 

 i'acts, and who was still living in 1554, when the Cronica del Peru 

 appeared in Dutch. With respect to the etymology of the word cannibal, 

 it seems to me entirely cleared up by the discovery of the journal kept by 

 Columbus during his first voyage of discovery, and of which Bartholomew 

 de las Casas has left us an abridged copy. " Dice mas el Almirante que 

 en las islas passadas estaban con gran temor de carib : y en algunas los 

 llamaban caniba ; pero en la Espanola carib y son gente arriscada, pues 

 andan por todas estas islas y comen la gente que pueden haber." [And 

 the Admiral moreover says that in the islands they passed, great appre- 

 hension was entertained on account of the caribs. Some call them 

 canibas ; but in Spanish they are called caribs. They are a very bold 

 people, and they travel about these islands, and devour all the persons 

 whom they capture.] (Navarete, torn, i, p. 135.) In this primitive 

 form of words, it is easy to perceive that the permutation of the letters r 

 and n, resulting from the imperfection of the organs in some nations, 

 might change carib into canib, or caniba. Geraldini, who, according to 

 the tendency of that age, sought, like Cardinal Bembo, to latinize all 

 barbarous denominations, recognizes, in the Cannibals, the manners of 

 dogs (canes), just as St. Louis desired to send the Tartars " ad suas four. 

 isreas sedes unde eiierluL" 



