The exploring parties found the first village abandoned; but this had been done so hastily that some young children had been left behind. These they decked with hawks' bells, to win their returning parents. One place showed a public square surrounded by rectangular houses, made of logs and intertwined branches, and thatched with palms. They went through the houses and noted what they saw. They observed at the entrance of one some serpents carved in wood. They found netted hammocks, beside calabashes, pottery, and even skulls used for utensils of household service. They discovered cloth made of cotton; bows and bone-tipped arrows, said sometimes to be pointed with human shin-bones; domesticated fowl very like geese; tame parrots; and pineapples, whose flavor enchanted them. They found what might possibly be relics of Europe, washed hither by the equatorial currents as they set from the African coasts,—an iron pot, as they thought it (we know this from the Historie), and the stern-timber of a vessel, which they could have less easily mistaken. They found something to horrify them in human bones, the remains of a feast, as they were ready enough to believe, for they were seeking confirmation of the stories of cannibals which Columbus had heard on his first voyage. They learned that boys were fattened like capons.
[From Philoponus's Nota Typis Transacta Navigatio.]
The next day they captured a youth and some women, but the men eluded them. Columbus was now fully convinced that he had at last discovered the cannibals, and when it was found that one of his captains and eight men had not returned to their ship, he was under great apprehensions. He sent exploring parties into the woods. They hallooed and fired their arquebuses, but to no avail. As they threaded their way through the thickets, they came upon some villages, but the inhabitants fled, leaving their meals half cooked; and they were convinced they saw human flesh on the spit and in the pots. While this party was absent, some women belonging to the neighboring islands, captives of this savage people, came off to the ships and sought protection. Columbus decked them with rings and bells, and forced them ashore, while they begged to remain. The islanders stripped off their ornaments, and allowed them to return for more. These women said that the chief of the island and most of the warriors were absent on a predatory expedition.
Ojeda's expedition.
The party searching for the lost men returned without success, when Alonso de Ojeda offered to lead forty men into the interior for a more thorough search. This party was as unsuccessful as the other. Ojeda reported he had crossed twenty-six streams in going inland, and that the country was found everywhere abounding in odorous trees, strange and delicious fruits, and brilliant birds.
While this second party was gone, the crews took aboard a supply of water, and on Ojeda's return Columbus resolved to proceed, and was on the point of sailing, when the absent men appeared on the shore and signaled to be taken off. They had got lost in a tangled and pathless forest, and all efforts to climb high enough in trees to see the stars and determine their course had been hopeless. Finally striking the sea, they had followed the shore till they opportunely espied the fleet. They brought with them some women and boys, but reported they had seen no men.
Cannibals.