Everything the Spaniards sowed or planted in Uraba grew marvellously well. Is this not worthy, Most Holy Father, of the highest admiration? Every kind of seed, graftings, sugar-canes, and slips of trees and plants, without speaking of the chickens and quadrupeds I have mentioned, were brought from Europe. O admirable fertility! The cucumbers and other similar vegetables sown were ready for picking in less than twenty days. Cabbages, beets, lettuces, salads, and other garden stuff were ripe within ten days; pumpkins and melons were picked twenty-eight days after the seeds were sown. The slips and sprouts, and such of our trees as we plant out in nurseries or trenches, as well as the graftings of trees similar to those in Spain, bore fruit as quickly as in Hispaniola.
The inhabitants of Darien have different kinds of fruit trees, whose varied taste and good quality answer to their needs. I would like to describe the more remarkable ones.
The guaiana produces a lemon-like fruit similar to those commonly called limes. Their flavour is sharp, but they are pleasant to the taste. Nut-bearing pines are common, as are likewise various sorts of palms bearing dates larger than ours but too sour to be eaten. The cabbage palm grows everywhere, spontaneously, and is used both for food and making brooms. There is a tree called guaranana, larger than orange trees, and bearing a fruit about the size of a lemon; and there is another closely resembling the chestnut. The fruit of the latter is larger than a fig, and is pleasant to the taste and wholesome. The mamei bears a fruit about the size of an orange which is as succulent as the best melon. The guaranala bears a smaller fruit than the foregoing, but of an aromatic scent and exquisite taste. The hovos bears a fruit resembling in its form and flavour our plum, though it is somewhat larger, and appears really to be the mirobolan, which grows so abundantly in Hispaniola that the pigs are fed on its fruit. When it is ripe it is in vain the swineherd seeks to keep his pigs, for they evade him and rush to the forest where these trees grow; and it is for this reason that wild swine are so numerous in Hispaniola. It is also claimed that the pork of Hispaniola has a superior taste and is more wholesome than ours; and, indeed, nobody is ignorant of the fact that diversity of foodstuffs produces firmer and more savoury meat./
The most invincible King Ferdinand relates that he has eaten another fruit brought from those countries. It is like a pine-nut in form and colour, covered with scales, and firmer than a melon. Its flavour excels all other fruits.[1] This fruit, which the King prefers to all others, does not grow upon a tree but upon a plant, similar to an artichoke or an acanthus. I myself have not tasted it, for it was the only one which had arrived unspoiled, the others having rotted during the long voyage. Spaniards who have eaten them fresh plucked where they grow, speak with the 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 Nuñez 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. It is called, because of its size, Rio Grande. An immense number of huge crocodiles live in the waters of this stream, which, as we know, is the case with the Nile; particularly I, who have ascended and descended that river on my embassy to the Sultan.[5]