highest appreciation of their delicate
flavour. There are certain roots which the natives call potatoes and
which grow spontaneously.[2] The first time I saw them, I took them
for Milanese turnips or huge mushrooms. No matter how they are cooked,
whether roasted or boiled, they are equal to any delicacy and indeed
to any food. Their skin is tougher than mushrooms or turnips, and is
earth-coloured, while the inside is quite white. The natives sow and
cultivate them in gardens as they do the yucca, which I have mentioned
in my First Decade; and they also eat them raw. When raw they taste
like green chestnuts, but are a little sweeter.

[Note 1: The pineapple.]

[Note 2: This is the first mention in literature of the potato.]

Having discoursed of trees, vegetables, and fruits, let us now come to
living creatures. Besides the lions and tigers[3] and other animals
which we already know, or which have been described by illustrious
writers, the native forests of these countries harbour many monsters.
One animal in particular has Nature created in prodigious form. It is
as large as a bull, and has a trunk like an elephant; and yet it is
not an elephant. Its hide is like a bull's, and yet it is not a bull.
Its hoofs resemble those of a horse, but it is not a horse. It has
ears like an elephant's, though smaller and drooping, yet they are
larger than those of any other animal.[4] There is also an animal
which lives in the trees, feeds upon fruits, and carries its young in
a pouch in the belly; no writer as far as I know has seen it, but I
have already sufficiently described it in the Decade which has already
reached Your Holiness before your elevation, as it was then stolen
from me to be printed.

[Note 3: It is hardly necessary to say that there were no lions or
tigers in America. Jaguars, panthers, leopards, and ocelots were the
most formidable beasts of prey found in the virgin forests of the New
World.]

[Note 4: This puzzling animal was the tapir.]

It now remains for me to speak of the rivers of Uraba. The Darien,
which is almost too narrow for the native canoes, flows into the Gulf
of Uraba, and on its banks stands a village built by the Spaniards.
Vasco Nunez explored the extremity of the gulf and discovered a river
one league broad and of the extraordinary depth of two hundred cubits,
which flows into the gulf by several mouths, just as the Danube flows
into the Black Sea, or the Nile waters the land of Egypt. I