trees, and are like the Aloe tree: they are of a very good smell and exceeding good taste. Other trees do bear a fruit which they call Mameis, of the bigness of peaches. This the islanders do hold for the best fruit of the country. There is another fruit which they call Guayabas, like filberts, as big as figs. There are other trees as high as a javelin, having one only stock without any bough, and the leaves as long as a casting dart; and the fruit is of the bigness and fashion of a cucumber; one bunch beareth twenty or thirty, and as they ripen the tree bendeth downward with them: they are called in this country Plantanos, and are of a good taste, and ripen after they be gathered; but those are the better which ripen upon the tree itself; they bear fruit but once, and the tree being cut down, there spring up others out of the but, which bear fruit the next year. There is another fruit, whereby many people are sustained, and chiefly the slaves, which are called Batatas. These grow now in the Isle of Terçera, belonging to the kingdom of Portugal, and they grow within the earth, and are like a fruit called Iname; they have almost the taste of a chestnut. The bread of this country is also made of roots which are like the Batatas.[C] And the stock whereon those roots do grow is like an elder tree: they make their ground in little hillocks, and in each of them they thrust four or five stakes; and they gather the roots a year and a half after they set them. If any one, thinking it is a batata or potato root, chance to eat of it never so little, he is in great danger of death: which was seen by experience in a soldier, which as soon as he had eaten a very little of one of those roots, he died quickly. They pare these roots and stamp them, and squeeze them in a thing like a press: the juice that cometh from them is of an evil smell. The bread is of little taste and less substance. Of the fruits of Spain, there are figs and oranges, and they bear fruit all the year, because the soil is very rank and fruitful. In this country are many good horses, and there is green grass all the year. There be many wild oxen and hogs, whereby the people of the island are well furnished with flesh. Without the towns abroad in the country are many fruits. And it happeneth sometimes that a Christian goeth out of the way and is lost fifteen or twenty days, because of the many paths in the thick groves that cross to and fro made by the oxen; and being thus lost they sustain themselves with fruits and palmîtos—for there be many great groves of palm trees through all the island—they yield no other fruit that is of any profit. The Isle of Cuba is three hundred leagues long from the east to the west, and is in some places thirty, in others forty leagues from north to south. It hath six towns of Christians, to wit, St. Jago, Baracôa, Bayamo, Puerto de Principes, S. Espirito, and Havana. Every one hath between thirty and forty households, except St. Jago and Havana, which have about sixty or eighty houses. They have churches in each of them, and a chaplain which confesseth them and saith mass. In St. Jago is a monastery of Franciscan friars; it hath but few friars, and is well provided of alms, because the country is rich. The Church of St. Jago hath honest revenue, and there is a curate and prebends, and many priests, as the church of that city, which is the chief of all the island. There is in this country much gold and few slaves to get it; for many have made away themselves, because of the Christians' evil usage of them in the mines. A steward of Vasquez Porcallo, which was an inhabitor in that island, understanding that his slaves would make away themselves, stayed for them with a cudgel in his hand at the place where they were to meet, and told them that they could neither do nor think anything that he did not know before, and that he came thither to kill himself, with them, to the end, that if he had used them badly in this world, he might use them worse in the world to come: and this was a means that they changed their purpose, and turned home again to do that which he commanded them.

The Governor sent from St. Jago his nephew Don Carlos, with the ships in company of Donna Isabella to tarry for him at Havana, which is a haven in the west part toward the head of the island, one hundred and eighty leagues from the city of St. Jago. The Governor, and those which stayed with him, bought horses and proceeded on their journey. The first town they came unto was Bayamo: they were lodged four and four, and six and six, as they went in company, and where they lodged, they took nothing for their diet, for nothing cost them aught save the maize or corn for their horses, because the Governor went to visit them from town to town, and seized them in the tribute and service of the Indians. Bayamo is twenty-five leagues from the city of St. Jago. Near unto the town passeth a great river which is called Tanto; it is greater than Guadiana, and in it be very great crocodiles, which sometimes hurt the Indians, or the cattle which passeth the river. In all the country are neither wolf, fox, bear, lion, nor tiger. There are wild dogs which go from the houses into the woods and feed upon swine. There be certain snakes as big as a man's thigh or bigger; they are very slow, they do no kind of hurt. From Bayamo to Puerto de los Principes are fifty leagues. In all the island from town to town, the way is made by stubbing up the underwood; and if it be left but one year undone, the wood groweth so much that the way cannot be seen, and the paths of the oxen are so many, that none can travel without an Indian of the country for a guide: for all the rest is very high and thick woods. From Puerto de los Principes the Governor went to the house of Vasquez Porcallo by sea in a boat (for it was near the sea) to know there some news of Donna Isabella, which at that instant (as afterwards was known) was in great distress, insomuch that the ships lost one another, and two of them fell on the coast of Florida, and all of them endured great want of water and victuals. When the storm was over, they met together without knowing where they were: in the end they descried the Cape of St. Anton, a country not inhabited of the island of Cuba; there they watered, and at the end of forty days, which were passed since their departure from the city of St. Jago, they arrived at Havana. The Governor was presently informed thereof, and went to Donna Isabella. And those which went by land, which were one hundred and fifty horsemen, being divided into two parts, because they would not oppress the inhabitants, traveled by St. Espirito, which is sixty leagues from Puerto de los Principes. The food which they carried with them was Caçabe bread, which is that whereof I made mention before: and it is of such a quality that if it be wet it breaketh presently, whereby it happened to some to eat flesh without bread for many days. They carried dogs with them, and a man of the country, which did hunt; and by the way, or where they were to lodge that night, they killed as many hogs as they needed. In this journey they were well provided of beef and pork, and they were greatly troubled with musquitoes, especially in a lake, which is called the mere of Pia, which they had much ado to pass from noon till night. The water might be some half league over, and to be swam about a crossbow shot; the rest came to the waist, and they waded up to the knees in the mire, and in the bottom were cockle shells, which cut their feet very sore, in such sort that there was neither boot nor shoe sole that was whole at half way. Their clothes and