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The only things they had to give in return were parrots and balls of cotton-yarn, besides cassava cakes, formed from the flour of a root called yuca, which they cultivated in their fields. The Spaniards, who were eagerly looking out for gold, were delighted to obtain some small ornaments of that metal in exchange for beads and hawks' bells.

The Indians brought along with them clews of cotton-yarn, parrots, javelins pointed with fish bones, and some other things, which they bartered for glass toys, hawks-bells and such trifles, with which they were highly pleased, and even set a high value on broken pieces of glazed earthern ware, plates, and poringers.

He fancied that the inhabitants had fled, mistaking his armament for one of those scouring expeditions sent by the Grand Khan to make prisoners and slaves. He, however, with the assistance of his Indian friends, succeeded in calming the fears of the natives, who came off in sixteen canoes, bringing cotton-yarn and other simple articles of traffic.

They had nothing to offer in return, except tame parrots, of which they had many, and balls of cotton-yarn; but the eyes of the Spaniards sparkled with hope when they saw small ornaments of gold, which some of them wore. Happy had it been for all the natives of the New World if this yellow metal had not existed among them, for it was to bring them untold suffering and despair.

According to Burn's Commercial Glance for 1842, the average price of cotton-yarn so exported, exceeds by some 50 per cent the average price of the cotton from which made.

As soon as they were departed, they went onwards of their journey, having got a good parcel of cotton-yarn to knit caps with, and having kept their wares, as they pretended, to exchange for dried flesh, which was sold only in those lower parts. Their way lay necessarily through the governor's yard at Kalluvilla, who dwells there on purpose to examine all that go and come.

For purposes of insulation the wires were neatly covered with cotton-yarn and then saturated in a bath of hot gum-shellac, but this treatment proved defective in insulating properties, for when ten miles of line had been completed the wires were found to be wholly useless for electric conduction.