Immediately on his return preparations were made for his stay, and eighty men were appointed to remain with him. These were divided into gangs of ten men each, and began to build houses on the bank of the Belem river on the right hand going up, about a cannon-shot from its mouth, and the infant colony was protected by surrounding it with a trench. The mouth of this river is marked by a small hill. The houses were all built of timber and covered with palm leaves, which grew abundantly along the banks of the river; and besides the ordinary houses for the colony, a large house was built to serve as a magazine and store-house, into which several pieces of cannon, powder, provisions, and other necessaries for the use and support of the planters were put. But the wine, biscuit, oil, vinegar, cheese, and a considerable supply of grain were left in the ship Gallega as the safest place; which was to be left with the lieutenant for the service of the colony, with all its cordage, nets, hooks and other tackle; for, as has been already said, there is vast abundance of fish in every river of that coast, several sorts at certain seasons running along the coast in shoals, on which the people of the country live more than upon flesh, for though there are some beasts of different sorts, there are by no means enough to maintain the inhabitants. The customs of these Indians are for the most part much the same as those of Hispaniola and the neighbouring islands; but those people of Veragua and the country about it, when they talk to one another are constantly turning their backs and always chewing an herb, which we believed to be the reson that their teeth were rotten and decayed. Their food is mostly fish, which they take with nets, and with hooks made of tortoiseshell, which they cut with a thread as if they were sawing, in the same manner as is done in the islands. They have another way of catching some very small fishes, which are called _Titi_ in Hispaniola. At certain times these are driven towards the shore by the rains, and are so persecuted by the larger fish that they are forced up to the surface in shoal water, where the Indians take as many of them as they have a mind by means of little matts or small meshed nets. They wrap these up singly in certain leaves, and having dried them in an oven they will keep a great while. They also catch pilchards in the same manner; for at certain times these fly with such violence from the pursuit of the large fish, that they will leap out of the water two or three paces on the dry land, so that they have nothing to do but take them as they do the _Titi_. These pilchards are taken after another manner: They raise a partition of palm-tree leaves two yards high in the middle of a canoe, fore and aft as the seamen call it, or from stem to stern; then plying about the river they make a great noise, beating the shores with their paddles, and then the pilchards, to fly from the other