426 



discovery of America, existed only among the 

 Caribbees of the West Indies. It is they, who 

 have rendered the names of cannibals, Carib- 

 bees, and anthropophagi, synonymous ; it was 

 their cruelties, that prompted the law^ promul- 

 gated in 1504, by which the Spaniards were 

 permitted to make a slave of every individual of 

 an American nation, which could be proved to 

 be of Caribbee origin. I believe, however, that 

 the anthropophagy of the inhabitants of the 

 West India islands was much exaggerated in 

 the tales of the first travellers^. Herera,, a 

 grave and judicious historian, has not disdained 

 to relate these tales in the Decades historicas ; 

 he has even credited that extraordinary event, 

 which led the Caribbees to renounce this bar- 

 barous custom. "The natives of a little island 

 devoured a Dominician monk, whom they had 

 carried off from the coast of PortoricoJ; they 



bees ? (Petr. Martyr., p. 6. Rochefort, Hist, des Antilles, book 

 2, chap. 7.) If this word be significative,, it seems to denote 

 rather tc strong and valiant strangers," than anthropophagi. 

 (Herera, Decad. I, p. 11.) Garcia, in his etymological 

 reveries, finds it to be simply Phenician. Annibal and Can- 

 nibal, according to him, must be derived from the same 

 Semitic root. 



* See the history of this law, which declares the liberty of 

 ail nations not Caribbees, in Gomara, p. 278-281 , 

 + Vespucci, p. 91. Grynaeus, p. 68. 

 + Herera, Decad. 1, p. 13. 



