438 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [voL. 48 
“On the first day of our landing several men and women came 
on the beach, down to the water’s edge, and gazed at the ships in 
astonishment at so novel a sight, but when a boat with some of our 
men was sent ashore, in order to speak with them, they cried aloud 
‘taino,’ ‘taino,’ which is as much as to say ‘ friends,’ ‘ friends,’ and 
waited for the landing of the sailors, standing, however, by the boat in 
such manner that they might escape from our men when they wanted 
todoso. The result was that none of those men could be persuaded to 
join us, and only two of them were taken by force and led away. 
More than twenty of the female captives were taken with their own 
consent, and a few of the native women, by surprise, and forcibly 
carried off. Several of the boys, who were captives, came to us, 
fleeing from the natives of the island who had taken them pris- 
oners in their own country. 
“We remained eight days at that port’ in consequence of the 
temporary loss of the before-mentioned captain and six men com- 
posing one of the detachments, and in that time we went on several 
occasions on shore, passing amongst the dwellings and through the 
villages located near the coast. We found there a vast number of 
human bones and skulls hung up about the houses, like vessels 
intended for holding various things. Very few men were there to 
be seen around, and the women that we had captured informed us 
that this was on account of the departure of ten canoes full of men 
having gone out to make war upon the inhabitants of other neigh- 
boring islands.?* 
1The port referred to here is the handsome bay of Point-a-Pitre. 
2These villages were composed of twenty or thirty houses, square in shape 
for the common people and circular for their chiefs, all surrounding an 
open place or plaza called batéy, among the Lucayans,.a name now-a-days 
applied to the open space occupied by the different buildings of a sugar 
plantation. The houses had the name bohios, and were made of trunks of 
trees, generally the royal-palm, and covered around with yagiias, that is, 
the large broad leaves covering the fruit of the royal-palm, which resemble 
thin, very pliable boards, from one to four feet wide and four to eight feet 
long, intertwined with reeds called bejucos, and still so named, and continued 
to the present day to be employed in the backwoods of Cuba, Puerto Rico, 
Santo Domingo, etc., as the abode of the farmers. The roofs of these huts 
are covered with the common, long, and flaked leaves of the same royal-palm, 
and have in front a sort of portico or extension of the roof that serves as 
shelter from the hot sun and from the rain. 
At the entrance of one of these houses in the island of Turuqueira the 
explorers found some images of serpents, tolerably well carved in wood. 
Perhaps this house was the church or place of worship of the idolatrous 
aborigines of America. 
3 When the Caribbee men went forth on their predatory expeditions, always 
