442 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [voL. 48 
“Tn their wars upon the inhabitants of the neighboring islands, 
these people capture as many of the women as they can, especially 
those who are young and handsome, and keep them as body servants 
and concubines; and so great a number do they carry off, that in 
fifty houses we entered no man was found, but all were women. 
Of that large number of captive females more than twenty hand- 
some women came away voluntarily with us.’ 
““When the Caribbees take any boys as prisoners of war, they 
remove their organs, fatten the boys until they grow to man- 
hood and then, when they wish to make a great feast, they kill and 
eat them, for they say the flesh of boys and women is not good to 
eat. Three boys thus mutilated came fleeing to us when we visited 
the houses. 
“We left that island eight days after our arrival.2 The next day 
at noon we saw another island, not very large, at about twelve 
leagues’ distance from the one we were leaving.* On that evening 
we saw another island, but finding there were many sandbanks 
near it we dropped anchor, not venturing to proceed until the morn- 
ing.t On the morrow another appeared, of considerable size,° but 
death of a Spanish sailor wounded with one of these arrows, which pene- 
trated his buckler and pierced his side during a fight with a party of these 
Indians, clearly demonstrated that that native weapon was not so harm- 
less as it appeared to be. 
These captive women were natives of the island of Borinquen, Puerto 
Rico of to-day, who seemed to be handsomer and more attractive than the 
Caribbee women. 
* Tuesday, November 12, 1493. The island here referred to is Guadeloupe. 
°This was Montserrat, so named by Columbus because its general ap- 
pearance reminded Fray Bernal Boil (a high ecclesiastic born in the province 
of Tarragona, Spain, who had been especially selected by King Ferdinand 
to accompany this expedition) of the celebrated mountain of Montserrat, 
in his native province, where the Benedictine monastery of which he was 
one of the Fathers is located. I have myself visited Montserrat, 30 miles 
north-west from Barcelona, and 24 miles in circumference, which is, in my 
opinion, one of the most beautiful mountains in the world. It is the Mons 
Serratus of the ancient Romans, with its loftiest point, where the monastery 
is located, a little over 4,000 feet in height. At present there is here, as in 
some of the mountains df Switzerland, a railroad that makes the ascent 
and descent by going around this remarkable promontory over jagged pin- 
nacles and steep precipices. The monastery is visited annually by about 80,000 
pilgrims and tourists. This mountain is also a popular place for the people 
of Barcelona to spend two or three days on picnics and excursions, and for 
newly-married couples of the middle class to enjoy their honeymoon. 
*Columbus called it “Santa Maria la Redonda” on account of its semi- 
circular shape. It is a rocky, barren islet, between the islands of Nevis (called 
Nieves in Spanish) and Montserrat, so steep on all sides that it seems in- 
accessible without ladders or ropes thrown from the top, and is inhabited 
only by workers in the phosphate mines. 
*This was Santa Maria la Antigua. It is 28 miles long and 20 broad, 
aot, 
