t seven hundred leagues or more,
besides visiting numerous islands, our ships became greatly sea-worn
and leaked badly, so that we could hardly keep them free with two pumps
going. The men also were much fatigued and the provisions growing short.
We were then, according to the decision of the pilots, within a hundred
twenty leagues of an island called Hispaniola, discovered by the admiral
Columbus six years before. We determined to proceed to it, and, as it
was inhabited by Christians, to repair our ships there, allow the men a
little repose, and recruit our stock of provisions; because from this
island to Castile there are three hundred leagues of ocean, without any
land intervening.

In seven days we arrived at this island, where we stayed two months. Here
we refitted our ships and obtained our supply of provisions. We afterward
concluded to go to northern parts, where we discovered more than a
thousand islands, the greater part of them being inhabited. The people
were without clothing, timid, and ignorant, and we did whatever we wished
to do with them. This last portion of our discoveries was very dangerous
to our navigation, on account of the shoals which we found thereabout.
In several instances we came near being lost. We sailed in this sea two
hundred leagues directly north, until our people had become worn down
with fatigue, through having been already nearly a year at sea. Their
allowance was only six ounces of bread for eating, and but three small
measures of water for drinking, per diem. And as the ships became
dangerous to navigate with much longer, they remonstrated, saying that
they wished to return to their homes in Castile, and not to tempt fortune
and the sea any more. Whereupon we concluded to take some prisoners as
slaves, and, loading the ships with them, to return at once to Spain.
Going, therefore, to certain islands, we possessed ourselves by force
of two hundred thirty-two, and steered our course for Castile. In
sixty-seven days we crossed the ocean and arrived at the islands of
the Azores, which belong to the King of Portugal and are three hundred
leagues distant from Cadiz. Here, having taken in our refreshments, we
sailed for Castile, but the wind was contrary and we were obliged to go
to the Canary Islands, from there to the island of Madeira, and thence to
Cadiz.

We were absent thirteen months on this voyage, exposing ourselves to
awful dangers, and discovering a very large country of Asia