Note 224-2 — Chapter VIII
Reading edition
D’Orbigny, Frag. d’une Voy. dans l’Amér. Mérid., p. 512. It is still a mooted point whence Shakspeare drew the plot of The Tempest. The coincidence mentioned in the text between some parts of it and South American mythology does not stand alone. Caliban, the savage and brutish native of the island, is undoubtedly the word Carib, often spelt Caribani, and Calibani in older writers; and his “dam’s god Setebos” was the supreme divinity of the Patagonians when first visited by Magellan. (Pigafetta, Viaggio intorno al Globo, Germ. Trans.: Gotha, 1801, p. 247.)