456 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [voL. 48 
under the command of two captains, one to Cibao,’ and the other 
to Niti, ? places in which, as I have already stated, Caonabo lived and 
ruled.* These two detachments in effect departed, and one of them 
returned on the twentieth of the month, while the other did so on 
the following day. The party that went to Cibao* saw gold in so 
many places that one scarcely dares state the fact, for in truth they 
found it in more than fifty brooks and rivers, as well as upon their 
banks; so that the captain said that any body who wished to seek 
for gold throughout that province, would find as much as he wanted. 
of the Spanish vice-roy of Pert, and the first European person to be cured 
with that wonderful new remedy), were not yet known to Europeans. The 
existence, and the wonderfully curative virtue, of the mysterious “ quinquina ” 
(a corruption of the indigenous Peruvian word kina-kina, which signified 
the bark par excellence), that saved the lives of Charles II. of England, 
Louis XIV. of France, and Friedrich the Great of Germany, was at that time 
known only to the aborigines of the yet undiscovered kingdom of Peru. And 
in truth, it was not until the year 1738 that, thanks to the valuable in- 
vestigations of La Condamine, the tree that produces this most precious 
bark was known with certainty; and he was, too, the first scientist who 
conceived, and carried out, the idea of transporting and transplanting that 
tree to other countries than the one of its natural habitat. 
*Which word in the Lucayan language meant “stone mountain.” 
2The fertile valley afterward called by the Spaniards “La vega real.” 
3Coanabé was a Caribbee by birth and the cacique of the rich province 
known to the Indians with the name of Mangana, located in the interior of the 
island. 
4The captain of this detachment was a young and daring hidalgo named 
Alonso de Ojeda, who was a native of the city of Cuenca, Spain, and started 
with only fifteen armed soldiers, at the beginning of January, to find the 
famous gold mines of Cibao. He returned a few days after with the news 
that there was, in reality, an abundance of gold in that region. He had 
been a bold warrior in the recently-terminated war against the Moors of 
Granada, of whom the following feat of courage and intrepidity is re- 
lated :— 
It took place in the tower of the Giralda, at Seville. To entertain Queen 
Isabella, in whose company he was as an officer of the guard during her 
visit to that tower, and to give proof of his courage and agility, he, armed 
and accoutred as he was at that moment, mounted on a great beam which 
projected in the air twenty or twenty-five feet from the wall of the tower, 
and at such a great height from the ground below, that the people in the 
street looked like dwarfs. Along that beam he walked briskly, and when 
at its extreme end he stood on one leg, lifting the other in the air; then, 
turning nimbly round, he returned in the same way, unaffected by the giddy 
height. Reaching almost the other end of the beam, and close to the wall 
of the tower, he stood with one foot resting on the beam, placed the other 
foot against the wall, and threw an orange he carried in his pocket over the 
summit of the figure Giralda, at the top of the tower. 
A a ee 
