Attached to the tapestries woven with gold which the Caribs left behind them in their houses when they fled, were precious stones: Oviedo and his companions affirm that they saw them. The country also has forests of scarlet wood and rich gold deposits. Everywhere along the coast and on the banks of the rivers exist marcasites[6] which indicate the presence of gold. Oviedo further states that in a region called Zenu, lying ninety miles east of Darien, a kind of business is carried on for which there are found in the native houses huge jars and baskets, cleverly made of reeds adapted to that purpose. These receptacles are filled with dried and salted grasshoppers, crabs, crayfish, and locusts, which destroy the harvests. When asked the purpose of these provisions, the natives replied they were destined to be sold to the people inland, and in exchange for these precious insects and dried fish they procure the foreign products they require. The natives live in scattered fashion, their houses not being built together. This land, inhabited by the people of Caramaira, is an Elysian country, well cultivated, fertile, exposed neither to the rigours of winter nor the great heats of summer. Day and night are of about equal length.
After driving off the barbarians, the Spaniards entered a valley two leagues in breadth and three long, which extended to the grassy and wooded slopes of the mountains. Two other valleys, each watered by a river, also open to the right and left at the foot of these mountains. One is the Gaira, and the other has not yet received a name. There are, in these valleys, cultivated gardens, and fields watered by ingeniously planned ditches. Our Milanese and Tuscans cultivate and water their fields in precisely the same manner.
The ordinary food of these natives is the same as the others--agoes, yucca, maize, potatoes, fruits, and fish. They rarely eat human flesh, for they do not often capture strangers. Sometimes they arm themselves and go hunting in neighbouring regions, but they do not eat one another. There is, however, one fact sad to hear. These filthy eaters of men are reported to have killed myriads of their kind to satisfy their passion. Our compatriots have discovered a thousand islands as fair as Paradise, a thousand Elysian regions, which these brigands have depopulated. Charming and blessed as they are, they are nevertheless deserted. From this sole instance Your Holiness may judge of the perversity of this brutal race. We have already said that the island of San Juan lies near to Hispaniola and is called by the natives Burichena. Now it is related that within our own time more than five thousand islanders have been carried off from Burichena for food, and were eaten by the inhabitants of these neighbouring islands which are now called Santa Cruz, Hayhay, Guadaloupe, and Queraqueira. But enough has been said about the appetites of these filthy creatures.