The first European who became intimately acquainted with the people of the West Indian Islands, on the return from his first voyage, wrote to the Spanish princes: " ... In all these islands I did not observe much difference in the faces and figures of the inhabitants, nor in their customs, nor in their language, seeing that they all understand each other, which is very singular." On the other hand the readiness with which the inhabitants of Aye-Aye and the other Carib islands gave asylum to the fugitive Boriquén Indians and joined them in their retaliatory expeditions, also points to the existence of some bond of kinship between them, so that there is ground for the opinion entertained by some writers that all the inhabitants of all the Antilles were of the race designated under the generic name of Caribs. The theory generally accepted at first was, that at the time of the discovery two races of different origin occupied the West Indian Archipelago. The larger Antilles with the groups of small islands to the north of them were supposed to be inhabited by a race named Guaycures, driven from the peninsula of Florida by the warlike Seminoles; the Guaycures, it is said, could easily have reached the Bahamas and traversed the short distance that separated them from Cuba in their canoes, some of which could contain 100 men, and once there they would naturally spread over the neighboring islands. It is surmised that they occupied them at the time of the advent of the Phoenicians in this hemisphere, and Dr. Calixto Romero, in an interesting article on Lucúo, the god of the Boriquéns,[89] mentions a tradition referring to the arrival of these ancient navigators, and traces some of the Boriquén religious customs to them. The Guaycures were a peacefully disposed race, hospitable, indolent, fond of dancing and singing, by means of which they transmitted their legends from generation to generation. They fell an easy prey to the Spaniards. Velasquez conquered Cuba without the loss of a man. Juan Esquivél made himself master of Jamaica with scarcely any sacrifice, and if the aborigines of the Española and Boriquén resisted, it was only after patiently enduring insupportable oppression for several years. The other race which inhabited the Antilles were said to have come from the south. They were supposed to have descended the Orinoco, spreading along the shore of the continent to the west of the river's mouths and thence to have invaded one after the other all the lesser Antilles. They were in a fair way of occupying the larger Antilles also when the discoveries of Columbus checked their career.