During the winter, Indians from the neighborhood of Cape Canaveral
brought to the fort two Spaniards, wrecked fifteen years before on the
southwestern extremity of the peninsula. They were clothed like the
Indians,--in other words, were not clothed at all,--and their uncut
hair streamed loose down their backs. They brought strange tales of
those among whom they had dwelt. They told of the King of Cabs, on whose
domains they had been wrecked, a chief mighty in stature and in power.
In one of his villages was a pit, six feet deep and as wide as a
hogshead, filled with treasure gathered from Spanish wrecks on adjacent
reefs and keys. The monarch was a priest too, and a magician, with power
over the elements. Each year he withdrew from the public gaze to hold
converse in secret with supernal or infernal powers; and each year he
sacrificed to his gods one of the Spaniards whom the fortune of the sea
had cast upon his shores. The name of the tribe is preserved in that of
the river Caboosa. In close league with him was the mighty Oathcaqua,
dwelling near Cape Canaveral, who gave his daughter, a maiden of
wondrous beauty, in marriage to his great ally. But as the bride with
her bridesmaids was journeying towards Calos, escorted by a chosen band,
they were assailed by a wild and warlike race, inhabitants of an island
called Sarrope, in the midst of a lake, who put the warriors to flight,
bore the maidens captive to their watery fastness, espoused them all,
and, we are assured, "loved them above all measure.
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