CHAP.
X.]
their ancestors.
CHRISTOPHER
COLUMBUS.
375
Here they enjoyed uninterruptedly, and in per
fection, those pleasures which constituted their felicity on earth. They lived in shady and blooming bowers, with beautiful women, and banqueted on delicious fruits.
The paradise of these happy
spirits was variously placed, almost every tribe assigning some favorite spot in their native province. Many, however, concurred in describing this region as being near a lake in the western part of the island, in the beautiful province of Xaragua.
Here there
were delightful valleys, covered with a delicate fruit called the mamey, about the size of an apricot.
They imagined that the
souls of the deceased remained concealed among the airy and inaccessible cliffs of the mountains during the day, but descended at night into these happy valleys, to regale on this consecrated fruit.
The living were sparing, therefore, in eating it, lest the
souls of their friends should suffer from want of their favorite nourishment.* The dances to which the natives seemed so immoderately ad dicted, and which had been at first considered by the Spaniards mere idle pastimes, were found to be often ceremonials of a seri ous and mystic character.
They form indeed a singular and
important feature throughout the customs of the aboriginals of the New World.
In these are typified, by signs well understood
by the initiated, and, as it were, by hieroglyphic action, their his torical events, their projected enterprises, their hunting, their ambuscades, and their battles, resembling in some respects the Pyrrhic dances of the ancients.
Speaking of the prevalence of
these dances among the natives of Hayti, Peter Martyr observes that they performed them to the chant of certain metres and bal* Hist. del Almirante, cap. 61. voix, Hist. St. Domingo, lib. i.
Peter Martyr, decad. i. lib. ix.
Charle