One spectacle, however,
chilled their blood with horror. This was the sight of human
flesh, which they found roasting before the fire, as the
barbarians had left it, preparatory to their obscene repast. The
Spaniards, conceiving that they had fallen in with a tribe of
Caribs, the only race in that part of the New World known to be
cannibals, retreated precipitately to their vessel. *17 They were
not steeled by sad familiarity with the spectacle, like the
Conquerors of Mexico.
[Footnote 17: "I en las Ollas de la comida, que estaban al Fuego,
entre la Carne, que sacaban, havia Pies i Manos de Hombres, de
donde conocieron, que aquellos Indios eran Caribes." Herrera,
Hist. General dec. 3, lib. 8, cap. 11.]
The weather, which had been favorable, new set in tempestuous,
with heavy squalls, accompanied by incessant thunder and
lightning, and the rain, as usual in these tropical tempests,
descended not so much in drops as in unbroken sheets of water.
The Spaniards, however, preferred to take their chance on the
raging element rather than remain in the scene of such brutal
abominations. But the fury of the storm gradually subsided, and
the little vessel held on her way along the coast, till, coming
abreast of a bold point of land named by Pizarro Punta Quemada,
he gave orders to anchor. The margin of the shore was fringed
with a deep belt of mangrove-trees, the long roots of which,
interlacing one another, formed a kind of submarine lattice-work
that made the place difficult of approach.
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