While the admirals brother was on shore, using his endeavours to learn the nature of the country, it so happened that a canoe eight feet wide and as long as a galley, made all of one piece, and shaped like those which were common among the islands, put in there. It was loaded with commodities brought from the westwards, and bound towards New Spain[7]. In the middle of this canoe there was an awning made of palm-tree leaves, not unlike those of the Venetian gondolas, which kept all underneath so close, that neither rain nor sea water could penetrate to wet the goods. Under this awning were the women and children, and all the commodities; and though there were twenty-five men in the canoe, they had not the courage to defend themselves against the people in our boats who pursued them. The canoe being thus taken without any opposition, was brought along side of the admiral, who blessed GOD for having given him samples of the commodities of that country, without exposing his men to any danger. He therefore ordered such things to be taken as he judged most sightly and valuable; such as quilts, cotton shirts without sleeves, curiously wrought and dyed of several colours; some small cloths for covering the nudities, large sheets, in which the women in the canoe wrapped themselves, as the Moorish women in Granada used to do, long wooden swords, having a channel on each side where the edge should be, in which many pieces of sharp-edged flints were fixed by means of thread and a tenacious bituminous matter; these swords could cut naked men as well as if they had been made of steel; hatchets for cutting wood made of good copper, and resembling the stone hatchets usual among the other islanders, also bells and plates of the same metal, and crucibles for melting it. For provisions, they had such roots and grains as they eat in Hispaniola, and a sort of liquor made of maize like English beer. They likewise had abundance of cacao nuts, which serve as money in New Spain, and on which they seemed to place great value; for when these were brought on board along with their other goods, I observed that when any of them fell, they all anxiously stooped to gather them up as if they had been of great importance.