e name of _Santa Maria et Antigua_ or
ancient St Mary, the coast of which extended fifteen or twenty leagues.
Many other islands were seen to the northward, which were very high, and
covered with woods. He anchored at one of these which he named St Martin;
and at another on the 14th November, which he named _Santa Cruz_, or the
Holy Cross. They took four women and two children at this island; and as
the boat was returning from the shore, a canoe was met in which there were
four men and a woman, who stood on their guard. The woman shot arrows as
well as the men, and one of her arrows pierced through a buckler. In
boarding, the canoe was overset, and one of the Indians discharged his bow
very vigorously while swimming. Holding on their course, so many islands
were seen close together that they could not be numbered, or separately
named. The admiral called the largest of these the island of _St Ursula_,
and the rest the _Eleven thousand Virgins_. He came afterwards to another
large island, called _Borriquen_ by the natives, but which he named the
island of _St John the Baptist_. It is now called _San Juan de Puerto
Rico_. In a bay on the west coast of this island, the seamen took several
kinds of fish in great plenty, such as skate, olaves, pilchards, and some
others. On this island many good houses were seen, all of timber and
thatched, each having a square inclosure and a clean well beaten path to
the shore. The walls of these houses were made of canes woven or wattled
together, and they were curiously ornamented with creeping plants or
greens, as is usual at Valencia in Spain. Near the sea there was a sort of
balcony or open gallery of the same kind of structure, capable to hold
twelve persons: But no person was to be seen about the place, all the
inhabitants having fled into the interior. On Friday the 22d of November,
the first land of Hispaniola was seen on the north side, to which they
went straight over from the extreme point of Porto Rico, the two islands
being fifteen leagues distant. At this place, which was in the province or
district of _Samona_, the admiral put one of the Indians on shore who had
been in Spain, desiring him to tell the natives all the wonderful things
he had seen, to induce them to enter into friendship with the Christians.
He readily undertook this commission, but was never more heard of, so that
he was believed to have died.

The admiral continued to sail along the northern coast of Hispaniol