The bread made by the natives is found, by those who are accustomed to our wheat bread, to be insufficiently nourishing and therefore they lose their strength.  The King consequently issued a recent decree, ordering that wheat should be sown in different places and at different seasons.  The harvest produced nothing but straw, similar to twigs, and with little grain; although what there is, is large and well formed.  This also applies to the pastures where the grass grows as high as the crops; thus the cattle become extraordinarily fat, but their flesh loses its flavour; their muscles become flabby, and they are, so to say, watery.  With pigs it is just the contrary; for they are healthy and of an agreeable flavour.  This is due doubtless to certain of the island’s fruits they greedily devour.  Pork is about the only kind of meat bought in the markets.  The pigs have rapidly increased, but they have become wild since they are no longer kept by swineherds.  There is no need to acclimatise any other species of animal or birds in Hispaniola.

Moreover, the young of all animals flourish on the abundant pasturage and become larger than their sires.  They only eat grass, not barley or other grain.  Enough however of Hispaniola; let us now consider the neighbouring islands.

Owing to its length, Cuba was for a long time considered to be a continent, but it has been discovered to be an island.  It is not astonishing that the islanders assured the Spaniards who explored it that the land had no end, for the Cubans are poor-spirited people, satisfied with little and never leaving their territory.  They took no notice of what went on amongst their neighbours, and whether there were any other regions under their skies than the one they inhabited, they did not know.  Cuba extends from east to west and is much longer than Hispaniola, but from the north to the south it is, in proportion to its length, very narrow, and is almost everywhere fertile and agreeable.

There is a small island lying not far off the east coast of Hispaniola, which the Spaniards have placed under the invocation of San Juan.[5] This island is almost square and very rich gold mines have been found there, but as everybody is busy working the mines of Hispaniola, miners have not yet been sent to San Juan, although it is planned so to do.  It is gold alone of all the products of Hispaniola to which the Spaniards give all their attention, and this is how they proceed.  Each industrious Spaniard, who enjoys some credit, has assigned to him one or more caciques (that is to say chiefs) and his subjects, who, at certain seasons in the year established by agreement, is obliged to come with his people to the mine belonging to that Spaniard, where the necessary tools for extracting the gold are distributed to them.  The cacique and his men receive a salary, and when they return to the labour of their fields, which cannot be neglected for fear of famine, one brings away a jacket, one a