A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 10: Arranged in systematic order: Forming a complete history of the origin and progress of navigation, discovery, and commerce, by sea and land, from the earliest ages to the present time.Kerr, Robert
History
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 10: Arranged in systematic order: Forming a complete history of the origin and progress of navigation, discovery, and commerce, by sea and land, from the earliest ages to the present time.
Kerr, Robert
Voyages and travels
These people are so taken with any thing that is new, that when the
Spaniards wounded several of them with their arrows, and even pierced
some quite through, they would pluck out the arrows from their wounds,
and stare at them till they died. Yet would they still continue to
follow after the ships, to gaze upon them as they were going away, so
that at one time they were closely surrounded by at least two hundred
canoes filled with natives, admiring those wonderful contrivances.
The 10th of March, the Spaniards landed on the island of _Zamul_, about
30 leagues from the Ladrones.[7] Next day they landed on _Humuna_, an
island not inhabited, yet well deserving of being so, where they found
springs of excellent water, with abundance of fruit-trees, gold, and
white coral. Magellan named this _the island of good signs_. The natives
from some of the neighbouring islands, a people of much humanity, came
here to them shortly after, very fair and of friendly dispositions, who
seemed well pleased at the arrival of the Spaniards among them, and came
loaded with presents of fish, and wine made from the cocoa-tree,
promising speedily to bring other provisions. This tree somewhat
resembles the date palm, and supplies the natives with bread, oil, wine,
vinegar, and even physic. The wine being drawn from the tree itself, and
all the rest from the fruit or nut. To procure the wine, they eat off
part of a branch, and fasten to the remaining part a large reed or
hollow cane, into which the liquor drops, being like white-wine in
colour, and of a grateful tartish taste. When a good quantity of this is
drawn off, it is put into a vessel, and is their cocoa-wine without
farther preparation.
[Footnote 7: In this voyage the term Ladrones seems confined to the most
southern islands of this group, as there are no other islands for a very
considerable distance in any direction. The entire group stretches about
6° 10' nearly N. and S. or 125 leagues. In modern geography, Guaham and
Tinian are the largest islands of the group. Urac, Agrigan, Analajam,
and Saypan, are the names of some others of the Ladrones. The names in
the text do not occur in modern maps. Thirty leagues from Guaham, the
southernmost island, would bring them to Tinian.--E.]
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