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which they call ' Ajes ' " (id., 251) ; and, Dec. 26, they gave 

 the Admiral a " collation, of two or three kinds of ' Ajes, 

 and of their bread that they call ' cazavi,' " etc. (id., 263) 

 After this the name of " niames " gives place to " ajes " (or 

 '^ ao'es "). On the second voj^age of Columbus, the natives 

 near Isabella (in St. Domingo), brought great quantities of 

 " ages which are like rapes (nabos) very excellent eating, 

 and " this age, the natives of Caribi (the Caribbean Islands) 

 call nabi, and the Indians [of Hispaniola ?] hage " (id., 368, 

 869). 



In two or three of the passages to which reference has been 

 made — particularly those in which bread is mentioned — the 

 Spaniards seem to have confounded the " ages " with the pro- 

 duct of the " yuca " (Manihot), or to have included both under 

 the general name of " niame " (or its equivalents, " Name, 

 Igname," etc.) Amerigo Vespucci — or some one of the sev- 

 eral translators through whom the relation of his first voyage 

 comes to us — says, that in 1497, " the common food of the 

 natives of Paria was the root of a certain tree (arborea radix 

 qusedam), which they reduce to a good enough flour, and that 

 some call this root ' lucha,' others ' Cambi,' but others 

 ' Ignami ' " (Navarrete, Colec, iii. 216). ^ 



This confusion of names, in the first decade of discovery in 

 America, was natural and unavoidable. The foreign name, 

 " niame, igname," was applied without much discrimination to 

 roots cultivated by the natives of the islands and the mainland 

 — primarily, to "ajes," occasionally to "yuca" (Manihot), 

 and perhaps to " batatas." In the relations of the voyages of 

 Columbus only two cultivated roots are named — " Ages " and 

 " Yuca." The first book of Peter Martyr's first decade (dated 

 1498, but probably revised before its publication in 1511) 

 names only these two ; and in the third book of his second 

 decade he mentions the use of the same two roots by the natives 



1 It is to this passage that Humboldt refers, in " Nouv. Esp.," 2d ed., 

 ii. 4G8 (cited by M. De Candolle, p. 63), as evidence that the name 

 " Igname " was heard on the continent of America by Vespucci in 1497 ; 

 but, as will be seen, Vespucci (or his copyist) does not say that this name 

 was used by the natives. 



