[223-1] Las Casas, I. 434, says that a section in the northeastern part of Española "was inhabited by a tribe which called themselves _Mazariges_ and others _Ciguayos_ and that they spoke different languages from the rest of the island. I do not remember if they differed from each other in speech since so many years have passed, and to-day there is no one to inquire of, although I have talked many times with both generations; but more than fifty years have gone by." The Ciguayos, he adds, were called so because they wore their hair long as women do in Castile. This passage shows that Las Casas was writing this part of his history a half-century after he went first to Española, which was in 1502, with Ovando.
[223-2] See p. 226, note 4, under Jan. 15.
[223-4] Las Casas, I. 434, says that Guanin was not the name of an island, but the word for a kind of base gold.
[223-5] A gap in the original manuscript.
[224-1] Las Casas, I. 435, has, "and as word of a palm-tree board which is very hard and very heavy, not sharp but blunt, about two fingers thick everywhere, with which as it is hard and heavy like iron, although a man has a helmet on his head they will crush his skull to the brain with one blow."
[224-2] "This was the first fight that there was in all the Indies and when the blood of the Indians was shed." Las Casas, I. 436.
[225-1] Porto Rico. Navarrete says it is certain that the Indians called Porto Rico Isla de Carib.
[225-2] Probably Martinique or Guadeloupe. (Navarrete.)
[226-1] By this calculation the Admiral entered the service of the Catholic Sovereigns on January 20, 1486. (Navarrete.)
[226-2] "What would he have said if he had seen the millions and millions (_cuentos y millones_) that the sovereigns have received from his labors since his death?" Las Casas, I. 437.
[226-4] Columbus had read in Marco Polo of the islands of MASCULIA and FEMININA in the Indian Seas and noted the passage in his copy. See ch. XXXIII. of pt. III. of Marco Polo. On the other hand there is evidence for an indigenous Amazon myth in the New World. The earliest sketch of American folk-lore ever made, that of the Friar Ramon Pane in 1497, preserved in Ferdinand Columbus's _Historie_ and in a condensed form in Peter Martyr's _De Rebus Oceanicis_ (Dec. I., lib. IX.), tells the story of the culture-hero Guagugiona, who set forth from the cave, up to that time the home of mankind, "with all the women in search of other lands and he came to Matinino, where at once he left the women and went away to another country," etc., _Historie_ (London ed., 1867), p. 188. Ramon's name is erroneously given as Roman in the _Historie_. On the Amazons in Venezuela, see Oviedo, lib. XXV., cap. XIV. It may be accepted that the Amazon myth as given by Oviedo, from which the great river derived its name, River of the Amazons, is a composite of an Arawak folk-tale like that preserved by Ramon Pane overlaid with the details of the Marco Polo myth, which in turn derives from the classical myth.