for “ bearded,” and there is no record of discovery
by men of Portugal. Mr. Froude said that he had
seen the name upon a Spanish chart of 1525» but
other writers declare that there is no mention of the
island earlier than 1536. It appeared upon old
Spanish charts as San Bernardo, Bernados, Barbu-
doso, Baruodos, and Baruodo, which may be variations
of an ill-known name and exhibitions of early
eccentricities in orthography. Even the meaning of
the name is disputed. It is generally explained as
referring to a wild fig or banyan tree which sends
shoots down to the ground like beards, and which
were common in the island when it was discovered,
giving its landscape a profusion of whiskers.
Mr. Froude did not like this derivation, and believed
that the Spaniards found bearded Caribs
there when they went around capturing wild men to
do their w o rk ; but there is no evidence of that, and
the Spaniards did not succeed in making slaves of
the Caribs who were much nearer their base than
this island. Besides, we have no record of whiskered
Caribs, and it is doubtful whether Spaniards visited
Barbados at all; but as this word is used in their
language for shoots growing from trees, without
thought of the original figurative sense, it seems
hardly necessary to strain so hard for a derivation.
The first thing definitely known is that after this
island appeared upon the charts as Barbados, an
English skipper on his way to Surinam with the Olive
Blossom landed on its shores, set up a cross, and
carved upon a tree, “ James, King of England and
of this island.” That was in 1605, and it is said that
the island was then covered with woods and inhabited
only by “ wild hogs,” which may refer to
peccaries. There were then, so far as known, no
Caribs there to be captured or exterminated. In
1624, Sir William Courteen, a London merchant,
trading with Guiana, sent a ship to Barbados to
establish a claim for himself, but the next year a
patent of proprietorship was granted to the Earl of
Marlborough, and two ships went out under his
authority, and landed in February, 1625, with thirty
colonists. T h e y called their settlement Jamestown,
but in 1627 the island was included in the grant to
the Earl of Carlisle on condition of a certain payment
to Marlborough for his interest. Under
authority of the new proprietor, the Society of
London Merchants acquired 10,000 acres of land,
sent out colonists, and established a government of
their own. Their settlement was made in 1628 on
the south-west coast, where there was a good roadstead,
which they called Carlisle Bay. Where they
established their town there was a rude bridge over
a creek, and they called the place Bridgetown, and
so it is unto this day.
T h e first settlers raised maize— which in our time
and country we call simply “ corn,” — yams, sweet
potatoes, and plantains, and, after a time, indigo,
cotton, tobacco, and ginger; and from the woods
they obtained logwood, fustic, and other merchantable
articles, for the time of sugar-cane and slavery
was not yet. In time, British fashion, they organised
their government on the home model, with
executive, judicial, and legislative powers, and es