There is very little rain either in Xaragua, the kingdom of Beuchios Anacauchoa, or in the Hazua district of the country called Caihibi; also in the valley of the salt- and fresh-water lakes and in Yacciu, a district or canton of the province of Bainoa.  In all these countries are ancient ditches, by means of which the islanders irrigate their fields as intelligently as did the inhabitants of New Carthage, called Spartana, or those of the kingdom of Murcia, where it rarely rains.  The Maguana divides the provinces of Bainoa from that of Caihibi, while the Savana divides it from Guaccaiarima.  In the deeper valleys there is a heavier rainfall than the natives require, and the neighbourhood of Santo Domingo is likewise better watered than is necessary, but everywhere else the rainfall is moderate.  The same variations of temperature prevail in Hispaniola as in other countries.

I have enumerated in my First Decade the colonies established in Hispaniola by the Spaniards, and since that time they have founded the small towns of Porto de la Plata, Porto Real, Lares, Villanova, Assua, and Salvatiera.  Let us now describe these of the innumerable neighbouring islands which are known and which we have already compared to the Nereids, daughters of Tethys, and their mother’s ornament.  I shall begin with the nearest one, which is remarkable because of another fountain of Arethusa, but which serves no purpose.  Six miles distant from the coast of the mother island lies an isle which the Spaniards, ignoring its former name, call Dos Arboles [Two Trees], because only two trees grow there.  It is near them that a spring, whose waters flow by secret channels under the sea from Hispaniola, gushes forth, just as Alpheus left Eridus to reappear in Sicily at the fountain of Arethusa.  This fact is established by the finding of leaves of the hobis, mirobolane, and many other trees growing in Hispaniola, which are carried thither by the stream of this fountain, for no such trees are found on the smaller island.  This fountain takes its rise in the Yiamiroa River, which flows from the Guaccaiarima district near the Savana country.  The isle is not more than one mile in circumference, and is used as a fish market.

Towards the east, our Tethys is protected in a manner by the island of San Juan,[2] which I have elsewhere described.  San Juan has rich gold deposits, and its soil is almost as fertile as that of its mother, Hispaniola.  Colonists have already been taken there, and are engaged in gold-seeking.  On the north-west Tethys is shielded by the great island of Cuba, which for a long time was regarded as a continent because of its length.  It is much longer than Hispaniola, and is divided in the middle from east to west by the Tropic of Cancer.  Hispaniola and the other islands lying to the south of Cuba occupy almost the whole intervening space between the Tropic of Cancer and the equator.  This is the zone which many of the ancients believed to be depopulated because of the fierce heat of the sun:  in which opinion they were mistaken.  It is claimed that mines, richer than those of Hispaniola, have been found in Cuba and at the present writing it is asserted that gold to the value of one hundred and eighty thousand castellanos has been obtained there and converted into ingots; certainly a positive proof of opulence.