ing it touches a greenish
black, that no washing can destroy this colour within twenty days.
When the fruit ripens the juice no longer has this quality; it becomes
edible and has a pleasant taste. There is an herb also, whose smoke
produces death, like the wood which we have mentioned. Some caciques
had decided to kill the Spaniards; but not daring to attack them
openly, they planned to place numerous bunches of this herb in their
houses and set fire to them, so that the Spaniards, who came to
extinguish the flames, would breathe in the smoke with the germs of a
fatal malady. This plot, however, was circumvented and the instigators
of the crime were punished.

Since Your Holiness has deigned to write that you are interested in
everything related concerning the new continent, let us now insert,
irrespective of method, a number of facts. We have sufficiently
explained how maize, agoes, yucca, potatoes, and other edible roots
are sown, cultivated, and used. But we have not yet related how the
Indians learned the properties of these plants; and it is that which
we shall now explain.

BOOK IX

It is said that the early inhabitants of the islands subsisted for a
long time upon roots and palms and magueys. The maguey[1] is a plant
belonging to the class vulgarly called evergreen.

[Note 1: ..._magueiorum quae est herba, sedo sive aizoo, quam
vulgus sempervivam appellat, similis_. (Jovis-barba, joubarbe, etc.)]

The roots of _guiega_ are round like those of our mushrooms, and
somewhat larger. The islanders also eat _guaieros_, which resemble our
parsnips; _cibaios_, which are like nuts; _cibaioes_ and _macoanes_,
both similar to the onion, and many other roots. It is related that
some years later, a bovite, _i.e._, a learned old man, having remarked
a shrub similar to fennel growing upon a bank, transplanted it and
developed therefrom a garden plant. The earliest islanders, who ate
raw yucca, died early; but as the taste is exquisite, they resolved to
try using it in different ways; boiled or roasted this plant is
less dangerous. It finally came to be understood that the juice was
poisonous; extracting this juice, they made from the cooked flour
cazabi, a bread better suited to human stomachs than wheat bread,
because it is more easily digested. The same was the case with other
food stuffs and maize, which they chose amongst the natural products.
Thus it was that Ceres discovered barley and other cereals amongst
th