"The said people live in almost a community of goods, rather of the
style of the Brazilians, and are wholly clothed with skin of wild
beasts, and poorly enough. In winter they are shod with stockings and
shoes, and in summer they go barefoot. They keep the order of marriage,
save that they take two or three wives, and after the husband is dead
the wives never remarry, but wear mourning for the said dead all
their lives, and besmear their faces with coal-dust and with grease
as thick as the thickness of a knife; and by that one knows that they
are widows. They have another custom very bad for their girls; for
after they are of age to marry they are all put into a common house,
abandoned to everybody who desires them until they have found their
match. And all this we have seen by experience, for we have seen the
houses as full of the said girls as is a school of boys in France.
And, moreover, gaming according to their manner is held in the said
houses, where they stake all that they have, even to the covering of
their nature. They do not any great work, and with little pieces of
wood about the size of a half-sword cultivate their land whereon they
raise their corn, which they call Zis, the which is as big as peas,
of the same grain in growth as in Brazil. Likewise they have a great
quantity of great melons, cucumbers, and pumpkins, peas and beans of
all colours, not of the kind of ours. They have also an herb of which
during the summer they make a great store for the winter, the which
they greatly esteem, and the men only use it in the manner following:
They have it dried in the sun and carry it about their necks in a
little beast's skin in place of a bag, with a horn of stone or wood;
then by and by they make powder of the said herb and put it in one of
the ends of the said horn, then put a coal fire thereon and suck at
the other end so long that they fill their bodies with smoke; insomuch
that it comes out by the mouth and nostrils as by a chimney funnel; and
they say that it keeps them healthy and warm, and they never go without
having their said things. We have tried the said smoke, which, after
being put into our mouths, seemed to be powder of pepper put therein,
it was so hot. The women of the said country work beyond comparison
more than the men, as well in fishing, of which they make a great
business, as in tilling and other things; and men, women and children
alike are more hardened to the cold than beasts, for with the greatest
cold that we may have seen, the which was extreme and bitter, they came
over the ice and snow every day to our ships, the most part of them
almost entirely naked, which is an incredible thing to one who has not
seen it. They take during the said ice and snow a great quantity of
wild beasts, as deer, stags, and bears, of which they brought us but
very little, because they were stingy of their victuals. They eat their
flesh wholly raw, after having been dried by the smoke, and likewise
their fish.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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