444 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [voL. 48 
“One of the Caribbees we held as captives told us that in one 
of the islands belonging to them, and called Cayre! (which was the 
first we saw, though we did not land on it), there is a great quan- 
tity of gold, and that if we were to give its inhabitants nails and 
tools with which to make their canoes, we might bring away as 
much gold as we like. 
“On the same day we arrived we left that island,? having being 
there no more than six or seven hours, and steering for a point of 
land that appeared to lie in our intended course of travel, we 
reached it by night. On the morning of the following day we 
coasted along, but found that although it was very large in extent it 
was not a continuous territory, for it was divided up into more than 
forty islets. The land was very high and most of it barren, an 
appearance which we had never observed in any of the islands vis- 
ited by us before or since: the ground seemed to me to suggest the 
probability of its containing minerals. 
“We proceeded along the coast the greater part of that day, and- 
on the evening of the next we discovered another island called by 
the Indians Borinquen,* which we judged to be on that side about 
thirty leagues in length, for we were coasting along it the whole of 
1As already stated, this was the island of Dominica. 
2The island to which Columbus gave the name of Santa Cruz, and now 
known as Saint Croix, where the explorers anchored on Thursday, November 
14, 1493. It lies 65 miles east southeast of Puerto Rico, and is 83 square 
miles in extent. Together with the islands of St. Thomas and St. John, it. 
forms to-day a Danish colony. 
Here in this island, the most northerly one inhabited by the fierce Caribbees, 
the Spaniards had their first fight with the Indians in trying to capture 
a canoe with two women, one man and a boy. Two of the Spaniards were 
wounded with arrows, and one of them, a Biscayan sailor, died later. The 
women fought as bravely as the men, and one of them wounded the sailor. 
He was duly buried on the shore of the island of Haiti, as the Lucayans 
called Hispaniola or Santo Domingo. 
3 Columbus named the largest of all these islets Santa Ursula, and the 
others “ The Eleven Thousand Virgins” (Las once mil virgenes), which are 
now called the Virgin Islands. Santa Ursula is known to-day as Tértola, 
which means turtle-dove. It is 11 miles long and 4 miles in its greatest 
breadth. The principal bay is on the southeast, and on that side there is a 
double curve of islets and reefs enclosing a vast roadstead with calm water, 
called Virgin’s Causeway. The group of islets has an area of 58 square miles, 
and a population of 4,639 inhabitants. Cotton and sugar are cultivated for 
exportation. The chief town is called Roadtown. 
‘This was the island of Puerto Rico, which Columbus named “San Juan 
Bautista” (St. John the Baptist). The date of its discovery was Saturday, 
November 16, 1493. 
