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.

Let us now speak a little of the roots destined to become the food of Christians and take the place of wheaten bread, radishes, and our other vegetables.  We have already said several times that the yucca was a root from which the natives make a bread they like both in the islands and on the continent; but we have not yet spoken of its culture, its growth, or of its several varieties.  When planting yucca, they dig a hole knee-deep in the ground, and pile the earth in heaps nine feet square, in each one of which they plant a dozen yucca roots about six feet long, in such wise that all the ends come together in the centre of the mound.  From their joining and even from their extremities, young roots fine as a hair sprout and, increasing little by little, attain, when they are full grown, the thickness and length of a man’s arm, and often of his leg.  The mounds of earth are thus converted little by little into a network of roots.  According to their description, the yucca requires at least half a year to reach maturity, and the natives also say that if it is left longer in the ground, for instance for two years, it improves and produces a superior quality of bread.  When cut, the women break and mash it on stones prepared for the purpose, just as amongst us cheese is pressed; or they pack it into a bag made of grass or reeds from the riverside, afterwards placing a heavy stone on the bag and hanging it up for a whole day to let the juice run off.  This juice, as we have already said in speaking of the islanders, is dangerous; but if cooked, it becomes wholesome, as is the case with the whey of our milk.  Let us observe, however, that this juice is not fatal to the natives of the continent.