On Tuesday, the fifteenth of January, while the caravels were anchored in the bay which he called the Golfo de las Flechas (the Gulf of Arrows), he describes the weapons of the natives. “The bows,” he says, “are equal in size to those of France and England, and the arrows like the javelins used by the inhabitants of the other islands, which are made of the stalks of the cane while it is in seed. They are very straight, about a yard and a half in length, and doubled, with a sharp piece of wood, a span and a half long, at the end. At the point of this some attach a fish’s tooth, but the most of them grass.... The bows of the Indians appear to be made of yew.” The quantity of sea-weed which he found growing in this bay led Columbus to infer that the Indies were near the Canary Islands, not more than four hundred leagues distant. On Wednesday morning, the sixteenth of January, they set sail from the Golfo de las Flechas, to go to the island of Carib. “After sailing sixty-four miles, as they estimated, the Indians on board signified that the island was to the southeast, when they altered their course, and proceeded in that direction, and after sailing several leagues the wind freshened and blew very favorably for their return to Spain. The crews began to grow despondent at leaving their homeward course, on account of the leaky condition of the vessels, (for there was no remedy for it but the help of God,) and the admiral found himself constrained to change his course again, and steer directly for Spain.”[166] Columbus, afterward writing to Rafael Sanchez respecting his explorations along the coast of Española, remarks that the island of Española is “greater in circuit than all of Spain, from Colibre in Catalonia, near Perpignan, round the coast of the sea of Spain, along Granada, Portugal, Galicia, and Biscay, to Fuenterabia, at the cape of Biscay.... Each native, as far as I can understand, has one wife, with the exception of the king and princes, who are permitted to have as many as twenty. The women appear to do more work than the men. Whether there exist any such thing here as private property, I have not been able to ascertain. I have seen an individual appointed to distribute to the others, especially food and such things.