Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/392

376 earthen jar containing bones, and some stone axes or celts, popularly known as "thunderbolts." In Jamaica we ourselves found pottery and bones imbedded in a cave in the rocks, out of which we had to break them with a machete, or cutlass. In the Jamaica cave, however, the lime in which the bones were incrusted appeared to be of stalactitic nature, and may have been deposited more rapidly than would have been the formation of true limestone. The district in which the cave is situated (the St. John's Hills, Guanaboa) is a very dry one, and there was no appearance of any drip from the roof or sides of the cave when we visited it; so it may be assumed that the incrustation must, in any case, have been a slow process. The Indians had been exterminated in Jamaica for a considerable period before its occupation by the English, which took place in the days of Cromwell, so even a low computation of the lapse of time must assign a respectable antiquity to the incrusted pottery and bones. When more extensive researches and explorations take place, it is possible that traces of human presence may be discovered in some of the older rocks or strata of some of the islands.

That all the larger islands were inhabited by a race which was divided into tribes, some of which spoke different dialects, but which derived their origin from the same stock, is shown not alone from evidence afforded by skulls, pottery, and implements, but from the fact of identity of language. On Columbus's first voyage he carried home with him some of the natives to exhibit in Spain. Among these was a boy named Didacus, taken by the admiral from Guanahani, now generally known as Watling's Island, the scene of the landfall. We are told that Didacus "was a man from his child's age, brought up with the admiral." Later on he sailed with Columbus back to the Antilles and acted as his interpreter, and eventually Guarionexius, the King of Cibana (in Hispaniola), in order to secure to himself the friendship of Columbus, gave his sister as wife to Didacus. In most of the islands Didacus appears to have understood the language with ease, and when he failed to do so the fact is expressly stated. This was the case at one end of Cuba.

But here [writes the old chronicler] Didacus, the interpreter, which understood the language of the beginning of Cuba, understood not them one whit; whereby they [the Spaniards] considered that in many provinces of Cuba were sundry languages.

Who these people were whose tongue was incomprehensible to a Lucayan, who spoke the Arrowauk language, we have no means of judging. As Didacus could not understand these people "one whit," the difference in their tongue from that of the generality of the Arrowauk descendants must have been very great, more so apparently than that of a diversity of patois or of accent. This seems