[226-1] By this calculation the Admiral entered the service of the Catholic Sovereigns on January 20, 1486. (Navarrete.)
[226-2] “What would he have said if he had seen the millions and millions (cuentos y millones) that the sovereigns have received from his labors since his death?” Las Casas, I. 437.
[226-3] Porto Rico.
[226-4] Columbus had read in Marco Polo of the islands of Masculia and Feminina in the Indian Seas and noted the passage in his copy. See ch. XXXIII. of pt. III. of Marco Polo. On the other hand there is evidence for an indigenous Amazon myth in the New World. The earliest sketch of American folk-lore ever made, that of the Friar Ramon Pane in 1497, preserved in Ferdinand Columbus’s Historie and in a condensed form in Peter Martyr’s De Rebus Oceanicis (Dec. I., lib. IX.), tells the story of the culture-hero Guagugiona, who set forth from the cave, up to that time the home of mankind, “with all the women in search of other lands and he came to Matinino, where at once he left the women and went away to another country,” etc., Historie (London ed., 1867), p. 188. Ramon’s name is erroneously given as Roman in the Historie. On the Amazons in Venezuela, see Oviedo, lib. XXV., cap. XIV. It may be accepted that the Amazon myth as given by Oviedo, from which the great river derived its name, River of the Amazons, is a composite of an Arawak folk-tale like that preserved by Ramon Pane overlaid with the details of the Marco Polo myth, which in turn derives from the classical myth.
[227-1] Y los mas le ponen allí yerba, “and the most of them put on poison.” The description of these arrows corresponds exactly with that given by Sir E. im Thurn of the poisoned arrows of the Indians of Guiana, which still have “adjustable wooden tips smeared with poison, which are inserted in the socket at the end of a reed shaft.” Among the Indians of Guiana, p. 242.
[227-2] Capsicum. (Markham.)
[228-1] Gulf of the Arrows. This was the Bay of Samana, into which the river Yuna flows. (Navarrete.)
[228-2] Porto Rico. It would have been distant about 30 leagues. (Navarrete.)
[229-1] “The sons remain with their mothers till the age of fourteen when they go to join their fathers in their separate abode.” Marco Polo, pt. III., ch. XXXIII. Cf. [p. 226, note 4].
[229-2] Now called Cabod el Engaño, the extreme eastern point of Española. It had the same name when Las Casas wrote. (Markham.)