THEIR HOUSES AND IMPLEMENTS.
A little further on, the admiral says of the people of a neighbouring island, that they were more domestic and tractable than those of San Salvador, and more intelligent, too, as he saw in their way of reckoning for the payment of the cotton they brought to the ships. At the mouth of the Rio de Mares, some of the admiral's men, whom he had sent to reconnoitre, brought him word that the houses of the natives were the best they had seen. They were made, he says, like "Alfaneques (pavilions), very large, and appeared as royal tents without an arrangement of streets, except one here and there, and within they were very clean, and well swept, and their furniture very well arranged. All these houses were made of palm branches, and were very beautiful. Our men found in these houses many statues of women, and several heads fashioned like masks, and very well wrought. I do not know, he adds, whether they have these for the love of the beautiful, or for purposes of worship." The Spaniards found also excellent nets, fish-hooks, and fishing-tackle. There were tame birds about the houses, and dogs which did not bark. "Mermaids," too, the admiral saw on the coasts, but thought them "not so like ladies as they are painted."
Speaking of the Indians of the coast near the Rio del Sol, he says that they are "very gentle, without knowing what evil is, neither killing nor stealing." He describes the frank generosity of the people of Marien, and the honour they thought it to be asked to give anything, in terms which may remind his readers of the doctrines maintained by Christians in respect of giving.