of one race, who do no injury to each other; but each and all of
them wage war against the other neighboring islands, and for the purpose
of attacking them, make voyages of a hundred and fifty leagues at sea,
with their numerous canoes, which are a small kind of craft with one
mast. Their arms are arrows, in the place of iron weapons and as they
have no iron, some of them point their arrows with tortoise-shell, and
others make their arrow-heads of fish spines, which are naturally barbed
like coarse saws: these prove dangerous weapons to a naked people like
the Indians, and may cause death or severe injury, but to men of our
nation, are not very formidable. In their attacks upon the neighboring
islands, these people capture as many of the women as they can,
especially those who are young and beautiful, and keep them for servants
and to have as concubines; and so great a number do they carry off, that
in fifty houses no men were to be seen; and out of the number of the
captives, more than twenty were young girls. These women also say that
the Caribbees use them with such cruelty as would scarcely be believed;
and that they eat the children which they bear to them, and only bring up
those which they have by their native wives. Such of their male enemies
as they can take alive, they bring to their houses to slaughter them, and
those who are killed they devour at once. They say that man's flesh is so
good, that there is nothing like it in the world; and this is pretty
evident, for of the bones which we found in their houses, they had gnawed
everything that could be gnawed, so that nothing remained of them, but
what from its great hardness, could not be eaten: in one of the houses we
found the neck of a man, cooking in a pot. When they take any boys
prisoners, they cut off their member and make use of them as servants
until they grow up to manhood, and then when they wish to make a feast
they kill and eat them; for they say that the flesh of boys and women is
not good to eat. Three of these boys came fleeing to us thus mutilated.

At the end of four days arrived the captain who had lost himself with his
companions, of whose return we had by this time given up all hope; for
other parties had been twice sent out to seek him, one of which came back
on the same day that he rejoined us, without having gained any
information respecting the wanderers; we rejoiced at their arrival,
regarding it as a new accession to our numbers. The ca