On the fifth of January, 1503, they cast anchor near a river which the Indians called Yebra, and the admiral Belem or Bethlem. Westward of it was a river which the natives called Veragua. Columbus, having determined to build a town at this point, began, about the end of February, to erect “houses upon the river of Belem, about a cannon-shot from its mouth, within a trench, on the right bank of the river, at the mouth of which there is a little hill. Besides these houses, which were all of timber and covered with the leaves of palm trees growing along the shore, another large house was built to serve as a store-house and magazine, in which were stored several cannon, some powder, provisions, and other necessaries for the use of the planters.... “The customs of the Indians here are somewhat similar to those of the natives of Española and the neighboring islands; but the people of Veragua and its neighborhood, when they talk to one another and eat turn their backs, and are always chewing an herb, which, as we think,” says Ferdinand Columbus, “makes their teeth to decay and rot. Their food is fish; these they take with nets and hooks.... They have an abundance of maize, which is a kind of grain growing in an ear, or hard head like millet, of which they make white and red wine, as beer is made in England, and mix their spice with it as pleases their palates. It has a pleasant taste like a sharp, lively wine.”[211] “In Cariay and the adjacent country,” says Columbus, “there are great enchanters of a very dreadful kind.... I saw there, built on a mountain, a sepulcher as large as a house and elaborately sculptured. The body lay uncovered with the face downward. The people told me of other very excellent works of art.... They said that there were great mines of copper in the country, of which metal they make hatchets and other manufactured articles, both cast and soldered. They also make forges from it, and all the apparatus of goldsmiths, and also crucibles. The inhabitants wear clothes. I saw in that province large sheets of cotton elaborately and skillfully made, and others very delicately colored with pencils. They informed me that in the interior, towards Cathay, that the people there have them interwoven with gold.... One thing I dare declare, for there are many to attest it, that in the land of Veragua I saw more indications of gold in the two first days [of my stay there] than I had found during four years in Española.”[212]