52 Timehri. 



first settlement of the island to this time, the ' Beards ' of the fig trees ; 

 and in all probability the Portuguese might originally have the same 

 notion of their resemblance, and from thence called this, and the neigh- 

 bouring islands conjunctly Las Barbados, i.e., the Bearded Islands ; for 

 Barbada in that language siguified anything bearded. And when this 

 island came to be inhabited by the English it retimed the general name 

 given originally to the iu/<oZe." 



This " conjecture " of Mr. Hughes is not borne out by history, nor 

 by the maps : it is like the other " conjectures " — uncertain. He states 

 all the islands were, as a group, called Las Barbadas. 



In Poyer's " History of Barbados," (published in 1808) the author 

 states : " From the Portuguese the island obtained the name of Las 

 Barbadas, in allusion, as some writers have supposed, to the barbarous 

 inhospitable state of the country." He, however, states, that Hughes 

 (before him) " conjectures " the appellation to have signified " The Beard- 

 ed Island " from the vast number of Indian fig trees. 



Poyer (who was a Barbadian) is of opiuion that Hughes did not prove 

 that Indians permanently occupied the island : he only proved that Caribs 

 from the adjacent islands visited Barbados for the purpose of fishing and 

 hunting, and perhaps for procuring clay for making domestic utensils. 

 He (Poyer) states that the Carlisle Settlers erected the bridge from which 

 Bridgetown derived its name. He also states that the English Settlers 

 (like the Spaniards before them) had recourse 1647 to the practice of 

 kidnapping the Indians and enslaving them. This entrapping caused the 

 Caribs dispersed through the Windward Islands to land where the Eng- 

 lish settlements were accessible to their canoes, and massacre the settlers 

 with remorseless vengeance. They did not, however, attack the settlers 

 in Barbados, 



Sir Robert Schomburgh in his " History of Barbados " (published in 

 1848) asserts that Barbado< was inhabited by Indians, and that the 

 Spaniards wiped them off the face of the earth. He states (page 255.) : 



" The researches which 1 have devoted to the earlier historians of the 

 New World have afforded me proofs that Barbados was known to the 

 Spaniards as early as the Commencement of the sixteenth century, and 

 apparently supplied Indians as slaves tor their mines in Espanola. Las 

 Casas, through his generous and constant exertions in favour of the 

 natives of South America, procured from Charles the Fifth some 

 amelioration of their condition ; and the Licentiate Rodrigo de Figueroa 

 was sent as Juez de Besidencia to Espanola, with instructions 

 to allow the Indians to live by themselves in their own 

 villages, and that all who requested it should be set at 

 liberty : and as the Indians from Trinidad had been taken for slaves 

 under the pretext of their being Carihs, the evil was to be remedied and 



