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.

[226-3] Porto Rico.

[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.

[227-1] _Y los mas le ponen alli yerba_, "and the most of them put on
poison." The description of these arrows corresponds exactly with that
given by Sir E. im Thurn of the poisoned arrows of the Indian