436 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [VoL. 48 
tity of cotton, both spun and already prepared for spinning, and 
provisions of food, of all of which he brought along with him a 
portion. Besides those articles of food he likewise brought away 
with him four or five bones of human arms and legs. When we 
saw those bones we immediately suspected that we were then among 
the Caribbee islands, whose inhabitants eat human flesh, because 
the admiral, guided by the information respecting their situation 
he had received from the Indians of the islands he had discovered 
during his former voyage, had directed the course of our ships with 
a view to find them, both on account of these Caribbee islands being 
nearest to Spain and also in the direct track to the island of His- 
paniola, where he had left some of his men when he returned to 
Spain. Thither, by the goodness of God and the wise management 
of the admiral, we came in as straight a channel as if we had sailed 
by a well known and much-frequented route.! 
“ This island of Guadeloupe is very large, and on the side where 
we arrived it seemed to us to be about twenty-five leagues in length. 
We sailed more than two leagues along the coast in search of a 
harbor. On the part towards which we moved it appeared all made 
up of very high mountains, and on the part we left there were 
extensive plains ;? on the shore were a few small villages whose 
inhabitants fled as soon as they saw the sails of our ships. At last, 
after having gone about two leagues’ distance, we found a port 
late in the evening.? 
“That night the admiral resolved that some of the men should 
1TIn order to do that, Columbus started from the Canary Islands on a 
much more southerly course than on his previous voyage, and thus avoided 
sailing over the Sargasso Sea, that large area of floating sea-weed in the 
Atlantic Ocean, formed by the Sargasso baccifera and allied species. Colum- 
bus was the first person who gave a description of it. 
2 Guadeloupe really consists of two islands, Grande Terre and Basse Terre, 
separated by a narrow channel called Riviére Salée or “Salt River.” Grande 
Terre is generally flat, composed of coral, limestone, and oceanic detritus, 
with the highest elevation less than 500 feet; while Basse Terre is of vol- 
canic formation, and traversed from north to south by a ridge of moun- 
tains with prominent peaks. One of these culminating points is the semi- 
active volcano La Souffriére, about 4,500 feet high. This island was dis- 
covered on November 4, 1493, and named by Columbus, Nuestra Sefiora de 
la Guadalupe, in remembrance of the famous sanctuary of Our Lady of 
Guadeloupe, in the province of Extremadura, Spain, to the ecclesiastics of 
which monastery he had promised to give that name to some island found 
in the -New World. The combined area of the two islands constituting 
Guadeloupe is 616 square miles. 
8This port is now known as the Bay of Point-a-Pitre, one of the best in 
the Antilles, and is locate@ at the south entrance of the Riviére Salée or 
channel between Grande Terre and Basse Terre. 
se 
