[299-1] See Journal of First Voyage, [December 25].
[299-2] The Bay of Caracol, four leagues west of Fort Dauphin. (Major.)
[299-3] “Toward midnight a canoe came full of Indians and reached the ship of the Admiral, and they called for him saying ‘Almirante, Almirante.’” Las Casas, II. 11.
[300-1] The hawk bell was a small open bell used in hawking. The discoverers used hawk bells as a small measure as of gold dust.
[302-1] See above, [p. 289, note 1].
[302-2] The mark was a weight of eight ounces, two-thirds of a Troy pound. The mark of gold in Spain was equivalent to 50 castellanos, or in bullion value to-day about $150.
[303-1] Melchior Maldonado, apparently the Melchiorius from whom Peter Martyr derived some of his material for his account of the second voyage. See his De Rebus Oceanicis, ed. 1574, p. 26.
[304-1] The familiar hammock.
[304-2] The original reads “cinco o seiscientos labrados de pedreria,” which Major translated “five or six hundred pieces of jewellery,” and Thacher “five or six hundred cut stones.” The dictionaries recognize labrado as a noun only in the plural labrados, “tilled lands.” Turning to Bernaldez, Historia de los Reyes Catolicos, in which Dr. Chanca’s letter was copied almost bodily, we find, II. 27, “cinco ó seis labrados de pedreria,” which presents the same difficulty. The omission of cientos is notable, however. I think the original text of Dr. Chanca’s letter read “cinco 6 seis cintos labrados de pedreria,” i.e., five or six belts worked with jewellery. Cintos being written blindly was copied cientos by Antonio de Aspa, from whom our text of Dr. Chanca’s letter has come down (Navarrete, I. 224), and was omitted perhaps accidentally in Bernaldez’s copy. This conjecture is rendered almost certain by the Historie, where it is recorded that “the Cacique gave the Admiral eight belts worked with small beads made of white, green, and red stones,” p. 148, London ed. of 1867. This passage enables us to correct the text of Las Casas, II. 14, changing “ochocientas cuentas menudas de piedra,” “eight hundred small beads of stone,” to “ocho cintos de cuentas menudas,” etc., “eight belts of small beads,” and again, ciento de oro to cinto de oro. In the Syllacio-Coma letter the gift is balteos duodecim, “twelve belts.” Thacher, Columbus, II. 235. Cf. Las Casas’s description of the girdle or belt that this chief wore when Columbus first saw him, Dec. 22, above, p. 194.
[305-1] These were not only the first horses seen in the New World since the extinction of the prehistoric varieties, but the first large quadrupeds the West Indians had seen.