Cabotto calls these lands Terra de Bacallaos, because the neighbouring waters swarm with fish similar to tunnies, which the natives call by this name.  These fish are so numerous that sometimes they interfere with the progress of ships.  The natives of these regions wear furs, and appear to be intelligent.  Cabotto reports that there are many bears in the country, which live on fish.  These animals plunge into the midst of thick schools of fish, and seizing one fast in their claws they drag it ashore to be devoured.  They are not dangerous to men.  He claims to have seen the natives in many places in possession of copper.  Cabotto frequents my house, and I have him sometimes at my table.[2] He was called from England by our Catholic King after the death of Henry, King of that country, and he lives at court with us.  He is waiting, from day to day, to be furnished with ships with which he will be able to discover this mystery of nature.  I think he will leave on this expedition towards the month of March of next year, 1516.  If God gives me life, Your Holiness shall hear from me what happens to him.  There are not wanting people in Spain who affirm that Cabotto is not the first discoverer of Terra de Bacallaos; they only concede him the merit of having pushed out a little farther to the west.[3] But this is enough about the strait and Cabotto.

[Note 2:  Again we see Peter Martyr’s system of collecting information illustrated.  Cabot’s discoveries on this voyage are indicated on Juan de la Cosa’s map, of 1500.  Henry VII. gave little support, and Cabot, therefore, withdrew from England.  In 1516 he was given an appointment by King Ferdinand, with 50,000 maravedis yearly and an estate in Andalusia.]

[Note 3:  The Bacallaos coast was discovered by the Scandinavians in the tenth century, and was known to the Venetians in the fourteenth.  Basque, Breton, and Norman fishermen visited it in the following century.]

Let us now return to the Spaniards.  Pedro Arias and his men passed the length of the harbour of Carthagena and the islands inhabited by Caribs, named San Bernardo’s Islands.  They left the entire country of Caramaira behind them, without approaching it.  They were driven by a tempest upon an island which we have already mentioned as Fuerte, and which is about fifty leagues distant from the entrance of the gulf of Uraba.  In this island they found, standing in the houses of the islanders, a number of baskets made out of marine plants and filled with salt.  This island is indeed celebrated for its salines and the natives procure whatever they need by the sale of salt.

An enormous pelican, larger than a vulture and remarkable for the dimensions of its throat, fell upon the flagship.  It is the same bird, which, according to the testimony of several writers, formerly lived domesticated in the marshes of Ravenna.  I do not know if this is still the case.  This pelican let itself be easily caught, after which they took it from one vessel to another:  it soon died.  A flock of twenty such birds were seen on the coast in the distance.