226 



to be woven into good cloth ; there are so many of these trees that 

 we might load the caravels with wool, although it is troublesome to 

 collect, for the trees are very thorny, but some means may be easily 

 found of overcoming this difficulty. There are also cotton trees as 

 large as peach trees, which produce cotton in the greatest abundance." 



The editor of these letters adds as a footnote after " very 

 thorny" (" muy espinosos ") : " A species of the natural order 

 Bombaceae ; perhaps the Eriodetidron anfractuostnii.'' The 

 "muy espinosos" in connection with a wool-bearing tree of 

 Santo Domingo is of especial significance. Oclwovia and perhaps 

 other native trees of the West Indian region " bear wool," but 

 none of them but Cciba pcntandi'a, so far as we know, is spiny. 



Columbus relates in the account of his first voyage that many 

 canoes were found in use by the inhabitants of the islands visited 

 and that these canoes were made of a single piece of timber. 

 The largest of these is referred to in the journal of Columbus for 

 Friday, Nov^ember 30, 1492, at which time the explorers were 

 at Puerto Santo [Puerto de Baracoa] near the eastern end of 

 Cuba ; this canoe, dug out of a single tree, was 95 /<7/;;/^i- (spans) 

 long and capable of carrying 150 persons. In parts of ancient 

 Spanish America, m/^rt', ccyba or seiba (written "seiba" in the 

 older documents of Cuba) * was a native name f for canoe and also 

 for a certain large tree ; and many of the older writers % associate 

 these large canoes with the tree now known as Ceiba poitaiuh'a. 

 While possibly this is not the only kind of tree now growing in 

 the West Indian islands which has a trunk sufficiently large for 

 the making of such great canoes, we have the testimony also of 

 various later writers § that the trunks of the Ceiba are used for 

 making canoes, and Mr. Norman Taylor, whose return from a 

 recent visit to the Sierra Maestra near Santiago, Cuba, has been 

 referred to above, tells the present writer that he saw dug-out 

 canoes made from the trunks of this tree now in actual use in 

 that region. Professor L. M. Uncjerwood in the course of his 

 visits to Jamaica has been told that canoes are there also still 

 made from the Ceiba. 



*A. Bachiller y Morales, Cuba primitiva, 242. 1883. 



t A. Bachiller y Morales, /. c. 234. 



+ Sloane, Nat. Hist. Jam. 2: 72-75. 1725. 



\E. g., Grosourdy, Med. Bot. Criollo, 2: 375. 1864. 



