But they were all gentler, fairer, more graceful and simple than the Caribs, or the natives of the main.  Their ambition found its limit when the necessaries of daily life were procured.  The greatest achievement of their manual dexterity was the hollowing of a great trunk by fire to fashion a canoe.[I] Their huts were neatly made of stakes and reeds, and covered with a plaited roof, beneath which the hamaca, (hammock,) coarsely knitted of cotton, swung.  Every collection of huts had also one of larger dimensions, like a lodge, open at the sides, where the natives used to gather for their public business or amusement.  This was called bohio, a word improperly applied to the huts, and used by the Spaniards to designate their villages.  In the southern districts, the bohios, and the dwellings of the caciques, were furnished with stools wrought with considerable skill from hard wood, and sometimes ornamented.  But they could not have been made by the natives, who had neither iron nor copper in use.  Their golden ornaments were nothing more than pieces of the metal, rudely turned, by pounding and rubbing, into rings for the nose and ears, and necklace-plates.  Whatever they had, for use or ornament, which was more elaborate, came by way of trade from Yucatan and the contiguous coasts.  It is difficult to conjecture what their medium of barter was, for they prepared nothing but cassava-cakes for food and the fermented juice for drink, and raised only the pimento, (red pepper,) the agi, (sweet pepper,) the yuca, whence the cassava or manioc meal was obtained, and sweet potatoes; and all these productions were common to the tribes along the coast.  Tobacco may have been cultivated by them and neglected by other tribes.  The Haytian word tabaco, which designated the pipe from which they sucked the smoke into their nostrils, and also the roll of leaves,—­for they employed both methods,—­has passed over to the weed.  The pipe was a hollow tube in the shape of a Y, the mystic letter of Pythagoras:  the two branches were applied to the nose, and the stem was held over the burning leaves.  The weed itself was called cohiba.

[Footnote I:  Canoa is Haytian, and is like enough to Kayak, Esquimaux, to Caique, Turkish and to Kahn, German, to unsettle an etymologist with a theory of origin.]

At the time of the discovery, five principal caciques ruled the island, which was divided into as many provinces, with inferior caciques, who appear to have been the chiefs of settlements.  We find, for instance, that Guatiguana was cacique of a large town in the province of which Guarionex was the chief cacique.  The power of each cacique was supreme, but nothing like a league existed between the different provinces.  When the Haytians in desperation tried the fortune of war against the Spaniards, Caonabo, the cacique of the central province in the South, like another Pontiac, rallied the natives from all quarters, and held them together long enough to fight a great battle on the Vega.  But he was a Carib.  His brother who succeeded him was also a Carib, and he maintained a union of several caciques till his defeat by Ojeda.  Then the less warlike chiefs of the North readily submitted to the Spaniards, and the bolder caciques of the South were compelled to ask for peace.[J]