452 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [voL. 48 
tainly attain a more luxuriant growth here in eight days than they 
would in Spain in twenty. 
“We are frequently visited here by a large number of Indians, 
accompanied by their caciques, who are their captains or chiefs, 
and many women. They all come loaded with ‘ages,’ a sort of 
turnip, very excellent food, which they cook and prepare in various 
ways. This food is very nutritious, and has proved of the greatest 
benefit to us all after the privations we endured when at sea, which 
in truth were more severe than man ever suffered. This age the 
Caribbee Indians call nabi. 
“These Indians barter their gold,} provisions, and every thing 
they bring with them, for tags, nails, broken pieces of darning- 
needles, beads, pins, laces, and broken saucers and dishes. They 
all, as I have said, go naked as they were born, except the women 
of this island,? who, some of them, wear a covering of cotton, which 
they bind around their hips, while others use grass and leaves of 
frees: * 
“When these Indians wish to appear full-dressed, both men and 
women paint themselves, some black, others white and red, and 
different combinations of colors, in so many devices that the effect 
produced is very laughable; they also shave some parts of their. 
heads, and in other parts of it wear long tufts of matted hair, which 
‘ give them an indescribably ridiculous appearance. In short. what- 
ever would be looked upon in our country as characteristic of a 
madman, is here regarded by the most prominent Indians as a 
mark of distinction. : ; 
“In our present position, we are in the neighborhood of many 
mines of gold, not any one of which, we are told, is more than 
twenty or twenty-five leagues off. The Indians say that some of 
them are in Niti, a place in the possession of Caonabo,* that Indian 
king who killed the Christians; other mines are located in another 
place called Cibao,® which, if it please God, we shall see with our 
*The Lucayans called gold, nucay. 
? The island of Santo Domingo, and also the native women of Cuba. 
*That covering of cotton was called nagua, by these Indians, from which 
the Spanish word enagua, meaning the inner white skirt of a woman’s dress, 
is derived. 
*He was a Caribbee by birth and ruled over the province of Hispaniola, 
called by the aborigines Mangana, in which were the mountains named 
Cibao. The appellation Caonabd, like all names of persons and of places 
in almost every Indian language, had a meaning, equivalent to Lord of the 
Golden House, and seeming to indicate the great wealth of his dominions. 
*This was the name given to a chain of mountains which traverses the 
center of the Island of Santo Domingo. 
T all 
ae 
