According to the account of Bernal Díaz, a member of the expedition whose Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España famously recalls the exploits of the conquistadores on this and the succeeding venture led by Hernán Cortés, after landing on the island: We found two stone buildings of good workmanship, each with a flight of steps leading up to a kind of altar, and on those altars were evil-looking idols, which were their gods.

[1]In 1683, Laurens de Graaf and Nicholas van Hoorn retreated to the island after their attack on Veracruz.

De Graaf was furious and the two quarrelled and then fought a duel during which Van Hoorn received a minor injury to his wrist.

[2] In 1823, when the island was visited by the antiquities collector, William Bullock, he found it to be a "mere heap of sand" and uninhabited, save for "only one wretched Indian family living on it".

Bullock also noted the island to be: ...strewed [sic] with the bones of British subjects who have perished in this unhealthy climate, and whose remains are not allowed to be buried in consecrated ground.