YBARRA ] LETTER OF DR. DIEGO ALVAREZ CHANCA 445 
one day.! This island is very beautiful, and, apparently, very fer- 
tile. Here the Caribbees come to make war upon its inhabitants, 
and often carry away many prisoners. 
“These islanders have no large canoes, nor any knowledge of 
navigation, as our prisoners inform us, but they use bows like those 
of the Caribbees; and if by chance, when they are attacked, they 
succeed in taking prisoners some of the invaders, they eat them up 
in like manner as the Caribbees themselves do. 
“We remained two days in a port of that island,? where a great 
number of our men went on shore, but we were not able to talk with 
the natives because at our approach they all fled, from fear, I sup- 
pose, that we were the Caribbees. 
“ All the above-mentioned islands were discovered on this voyage, 
the admiral not having seen any of them on his former trip. They 
are all very beautiful and possess a most luxuriant soil, but this 
island of Borinquen appears to exceed the others in beauty. ® 
“Here almost terminates the group of islands which on the side 
toward Spain had not been seen before by the admiral,* although 
we regard as a matter of certainty that there is land more than forty 
leagues beyond the southernmost of these newly discovered islands. 
We believe this to be the case because two days before wé saw the 
first island, ® we had observed some birds called ‘ rabihorcados,’ which 
are marine birds of prey that do not sit nor sleep upon the water, 
making circumvolutions high in the air at the close of the evening, 
1An astonishingly-exact calculation of Dr. Chanca, for Puerto Rico is 90 
miles long from east to west (very nearly the equivalent of 30 Spanish 
leagues), and 36 miles broad, with an area of 3,600 square miles and a popu- 
lation of 953,243 inhabitants. The capital is San Juan, but the city of Ponce 
is the acknowledged metropolis, the first with a population of 32,048 inhabi- 
tants, and the second numbering 27,952 souls. 
*The port here referred to is now known as the bay of Mayagiitez. 
3’The islands of St. Kitts and Nevis are not mentioned by Dr. Chanca in 
this account of the voyage, but they must have been seen by the explorers, 
for another writer of those times speaks of them as “San Cristobal” and 
“Nuestra Sefiora de las Nieves,” respectively. 
‘Here ended the Caribbee Islands? the account of whose fierce and savage 
inhabitants was received with eager curiosity by the learned of Europe. 
Traces of that same race of cannibals have more recently been discovered— 
and in a masterful and philosophical way described by Alexander von Hum- 
boldt—far in the interior of the country through which flows the great 
Orinoco river of Venezuela. 
5It is truly admirable how nearly exact was this calculation of Dr. Chanca, 
for the comparatively large islands of Curacoa and Trinidad, and the North 
coast of Venezuela, are about that distance from Martinique. 
6The island of Dominica. 
