Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery — Volume 7 — John Shaqi
Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery — Volume 7Young, Filson
History
Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery — Volume 7
Young, Filson
America -- Discovery and exploration; Columbus, Christopher, 1451-1506
" . . When I reached there, they immediately sent me two young
girls dressed in rich garments. The older one might not have been
more than eleven years of age and the other seven; both with so much
experience, so much manner, and so much appearance as would have
been sufficient if they had been public women for twenty years.
They bore with them magic powder and other things belonging to their
art. When they arrived I gave orders that they should be adorned
with our things and sent them immediately ashore. There I saw a
tomb within the mountain as large as a house and finely worked with
great artifice, and a corpse stood thereon uncovered, and, looking
within it, it seemed as if he stood upright. Of the other arts they
told me that there was excellence. Great and little animals are
there in quantities, and very different from ours; among which I saw
boars of frightful form so that a dog of the Irish breed dared not
face them. With a cross-bow I had wounded an animal which exactly
resembles a baboon only that it was much larger and has a face like
a human being. I had pierced it with an arrow from one side to the
other, entering in the breast and going out near the tail, and
because it was very ferocious I cut off one of the fore feet which
rather seemed to be a hand, and one of the hind feet. The boars
seeing this commenced to set up their bristles and fled with great
fear, seeing the blood of the other animal. When I saw this I
caused to be thrown them the 'uegare,'--[Peccary]--certain animals
they call so, where it stood, and approaching him, near as he was to
death, and the arrow still sticking in his body, he wound his tail
around his snout and held it fast, and with the other hand which
remained free, seized him by the neck as an enemy. This act, so
magnificent and novel, together with the fine country and hunting of
wild beasts, made me write this to your Majesties."
The natives at this anchorage of Cariari were rather suspicious, but
Columbus seized two of them to act as guides in his journey further down
the coast. Weighing anchor on October 5th he worked along the Costa Rica
shore, which here turns to the eastward again, and soon found a tribe of
natives who wore large ornaments of gold. They were reluctant to part
with the gold, but as usual pointed down the coast and said that there
was much more gold there; they even gave a name to the place where the
gold could be found--Veragua; and for once this country was found to have
a real existence. The fleet anchored there on October 17th, being
greeted by defiant blasts of conch shells and splashing of water from the
indignant natives. Business was done, however: seventeen gold discs in
exchange for three hawks' bells.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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