xxiv INTRODUCTION

are freed from the baleful distemper. As the cure became
known, others added lard, with turpentine or larch—resin. " Here
there is a sudden transition from the ornate language of the
myth to a medical prescription, which includes most of the
herbal and other ingredients mentioned with more precision in
Contagion.

Guaiac

Book III is devoted to the praise of the tree Hyacus or Huya—
cus (Rutacea) and guaiae, derived from its sacred wood (sanc—
tum lignum), and relates how Columbus and his erew landed
on Hayti, (called in Con/agion, Hispaniola), here called Ophyre,
from its gold—bearing sands.' The natives are almost univer—
sally afflicted with the strange malady, and are as regularly
cured by guaiac. Its preparation and the use of the froth,
spuma, are much more briefly described than in Con/agion.
They drink the first decoction instead of food, and stay in the
house for a month protected from fresh air. (This seems to
be a curious ascription to primitive, black people, of the methods
employed in Italy when he wrote; he may have derived it from
de V Isla or Oviedo.) / The Spaniards, using the new and almost
sacrilegious invention of gunpowder, shoot birds sacred to
Apollo,? and are warned by one of them that they will be pun—
ished by a new and terrible disease, for which they must "seek
aid from yonder wood". Thefriendly natives welcome them with
gifts, and they learn one another!s language. On a festal day
in honor of Apollo, the Spaniards see with horror a crowd of
emaciated men and women of all ages, covered with running
sores, squalentes crustis omnes, taboque fluentes. A priest
sprinkles them with water, using the boughs of the tree hyacus.
This, then, is the malady that threatens them. Columbus
asks their king the meaning of the ritual, and why a shepherd?

:In my opinion, he means Hayti, though some commentators
think the island was one of the Lesser Antilles.

* A. hackneyed theme, in which he echoes the myth of Odysseus
whose crew were punished for killing the sun—god's cattle, or Virgil,
Aeneid 3, the incident of the Harpies. He has already used the
idea for the story of Ileeus, above.

s Observe that he is a pastor, not & swine—herd; swine are men—
tioned in the poem only as slaughtered, with other animals, for the
feast that follows the ritual.