A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 12: 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 TimeKerr, Robert
History
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 12: 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
they had no idea of hot water or its effects: But from the time that the
old man was in possession of an iron pot, he and his friends eat boiled
meat every day. The iron pots which I afterwards gave to the queen and
several of the chiefs, were also in constant use, and brought as many
people together, as a monster or a puppet-show in a country fair. They
appeared to have no liquor for drinking but water, and to be happily
ignorant of the art of fermenting the juice of any vegetable, so as to
give it an intoxicating quality: They have, as has been already
observed, the sugar-cane, but they seemed to make no other use of it
than to chew, which they do not do habitually, but only break a piece
off when they happen to pass by a place where it is growing.
Of their domestic life and amusements, we had not sufficient opportunity
to obtain much knowledge; but they appear sometimes to have wars with
each other, not only from their weapons, but the scars with which many
of them were marked, and some of which appeared to be the remains of
very considerable wounds, made with stones, bludgeons, or some other
obtuse weapon: By these scars also they appear to be no inconsiderable
proficients in surgery, of which indeed we happened to have more direct
evidence. One of our seamen, when he was on shore, run a large splinter
into his foot, and the surgeon being on board, one of his comrades
endeavoured to take it out with a penknife; but after putting the poor
fellow to a good deal of pain, was obliged to give it over. Our good old
Indian, who happened to be present, then called over one of his
countrymen that was standing on the opposite side of the river, who,
having looked at the seaman's foot, went immediately down to the beach,
and, taking up a shell, broke it to a point with his teeth; with this
instrument, in little more than a minute, he laid open the place, and
extracted the splinter; in the mean time the old man, who, as soon as he
had called the other over, went a little way into the wood, returned
with some gum, which he applied to the wound upon a piece of the cloth
that was wrapped round him, and in two days time it was perfectly
healed. We afterward learned that this gum was produced by the apple
tree, and our surgeon procured some of it, and used it as a vulnerary
balsam with great success.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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