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This may possibly have been the origin of the terror evinced by the inhabitants of Cariari at the sight of the materials of writing, conceiving that the Spaniards were emissaries from the sanguinary Mexicans, and about to record the measure of the tribute in human blood. A more charitable construction might be put on all this.
Indeed, not to conceal a foible, which was more characteristic of the superstition of the age than of the man, Columbus himself entertained an idea of the kind, and assures the sovereigns, in his letter from Jamaica, that the people of Cariari and its vicinity are great enchanters, and he intimates, that the two Indian girls who had visited his ship had magic powder concealed about their persons.
Assisted by the two Indians from Cariari, who acted as interpreters, our people bought one of the gold plates which weighed ten ducats for three horse-bells, and the Indians said that there was great plenty of that metal to be had farther up the country at no great distance.
These fabricators of charts often commit vast mistakes from ignorance; thus these same islands and that part of the continent nearest them are twice inserted in their charts, as if they were different countries; and though cape Garcias a Dios, and that they call Cape . The occasion of this mistake was, that after the admiral had discovered these countries, one John Diaz de Solis, from whom the Rio de Plata was named Rio de Solis because he was there killed by the Indians, and one Vincent Yanez Pinzon, who commanded a ship in the first voyage when the admiral discovered the Indies, set out together on a voyage of discovery in the year 1508, designing to sail along that coast which the admiral discovered in his voyage from Veragua westwards; and following almost the same track which he had done, they put into the port of Cariari and passed by Cape Garcias a Dios as far as Cape Casinas, which they called Cape Honduras, and they named the before mentioned islands the Guanaias, giving the name of the biggest to them all.
The inhabitants of Cariari manifested unusual sensibility at this seizure of their countrymen. They thronged the shore, and sent off four of their principal men with presents to the ships, imploring the release of the prisoners. The admiral assured them that he only took their companions as guides, for a short distance along the coast, and would restore them soon in safety to their homes.
This act, so magnificent and novel, together with the fine country and hunting of wild beasts, made me write this to your Majesties." The natives at this anchorage of Cariari were rather suspicious, but Columbus seized two of them to act as guides in his journey further down the coast.
It is a small league from the town named Cariari by the Indians, which is situated near a large river, whither a great number of people resorted from the adjacent parts; some with bows and arrows, others armed with staves of palm tree, as black as coal and as hard as horn, pointed with fish bone, and others with clubs, and they came in a body as if they meant to defend their country.
The San Sebastian likewise was in trouble. No break for seven days. It was those enchanters of Cariari magic asleep for a while but now awake! Storm. And two ships nigh to foundering. When wind sank and blue came back, we left Puerto Bello and turned again south by east, but now with crazy, crazy ships, weather-wrenched and worm-eaten, teredo pierced.
Across, upon the main, stood a small village. Cariari the Indians there called themselves. They had some gold, but not to touch that canoe from Yucatan. Likewise they owned a few cotton mantles, with jars of baked clay, and we saw a copper hatchet. But they did not themselves make these things. They had drifted to them, we thought, from a people far more skilled.
The people of the country were seen to gather, calling one another together with horns and drums, and they afterwards sent two men in a canoe towards the ships; who, after some conversation with the Indians who had been taken at Cariari, came on board the admiral without any signs of apprehension, and by the advice of the Cariari Indians gave the admiral two gold plates which they wore about their necks, for which he gave them some baubles in return.
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