CHAP.
I.]
CHRISTOPHER
COLUMBUS.
233
they found the natives quite different from the gentle and pacific people hitherto met with on this island. cious aspect, and hideously painted.
They were of a fero
Their hair was long, tied
behind, and decorated with the feathers of parrots and other birds of gaudy plumage.
Some were armed with war-clubs; others
had bows of the length of those used by the English archers, with arrows of slender reeds, pointed with hard wood, or tipped with bone or the tooth of a fish. Their swords were of palm wood, as hard and heavy as iron; not sharp, but broad, nearly of the thickness of two fingers, and capable, with one blow, of cleaving through a helmet to the very brains.*
Though thus
prepared for combat, they made no attempt to molest the Span iards ; on the contrary, they sold them two of their bows and several of their arrows, and one of them was prevailed upon to go on board of the admiral's ship. Columbus was persuaded, from the ferocious looks and hardy undaunted manner of this wild warrior, that he and his companions were of the nation of Caribs, so much dreaded throughout these seas, and that the gulf in which he was anchored must be a strait separating their island from Hispaniola.
On inquiring of the
Indian, however, he still pointed to the east, as the quarter where lay the Caribbean islands.
He spoke also of an island, called
Mantinino, which Columbus fancied him to say was peopled merely by women, who received the Caribs among them once a year, for the sake of continuing the population of their island. All the male progeny resulting from such visits were delivered to the fathers, the female remained with the mothers. This Amazonian island is repeatedly mentioned in the course
* Las Casas, Hist. Ind., lib. i. cap. 77, M S .