which cure the leprosy and the itch, in such as are content to make them their constant food.  It produces maize or Indian corn in great abundance; and every thing considered, it may be pronounced the finest and best provided country in that part of the world.  The natives of Cuba were of the same nation with those of the Lucayos islands, a good sort of people, and very well tempered.  They were governed by caciques, having towns of 200 or 300 houses, in each of which several families resided, as in Hispaniola.

They had no religion, having no temples, idols, or sacrifices; but they had a kind of conjuring priests or jugglers, like those in Hispaniola, who pretended to have communication with the devil, and to obtain answers from him to their questions.  To obtain this favour, they fasted three or four months, using only the juice of herbs; and when reduced to extreme weakness, they were worthy of inspiration, and to be informed whether the seasons of the year would be favourable or otherwise; what children were to be born, and whether those born were to live, and such like questions.  These conjurors, who were called behiques, were the oracles of the natives, whom they led into many superstitions and absurdities; pretending to cure the sick by blowing on them, and other mummeries, muttering some unintelligible words between their teeth.  The natives of Cuba acknowledged that the heavens and earth, and all things contained in these, had been created.  They are even said to have had traditions concerning the flood, and the destruction of the world by water, occasioned by three persons who came three several ways.  The old men reported, that a sage who knew the approaching deluge, built a great ship, into which he went with his family, and many animals.  That he sent out a crow, which remained a long while out, feeding on the dead bodies, and afterwards returned with a green branch.  They added many other particulars respecting the deluge, even to two of Noah’s sons covering him when drunk, while the third scoffed him; adding that the Indians were descended from the latter, and therefore had no clothes, whereas the Spaniards descended from the other sons, and had therefore clothes and horses.  As they lived in towns under the authority of caciques, it is probable that the will of these chiefs served as law.

Some time before the expedition of Velasquez to Cuba, a cacique of the province of Guatiba, in Hispaniola, named Hatuey, to escape from the tyranny of the Spaniards, went over to the eastern end of Cuba with as many of his people as he could induce to accompany him; the distance between the two islands being only eighteen leagues.  He settled with his followers in the nearest district of Cuba, called Mayci, reducing the inhabitants of that place to subjection, but not to slavery.  In fact slavery does not appear to have been practised in any part of the West Indies, no difference being made even by the caciques