As to Drogeo,—which he speaks of as if it were the mainland,—that was still occasionally resorted to for fishing; and he relates the adventures of a white man who had been captured by the mainland savages a few years previously, and adopted by them on account of his knowledge of how to fish with a net, and to do other useful things. Such a course would be very characteristic of the aborigines of eastern North America, as we have since learned to know; and it is also natural that he should have been fought for by rival chiefs, as Zeno says happened to this man, who, by capture and exchange, or of his own motion, traveled about and saw much of the people of this “country” Drogeo. At any rate, the information given by Zeno tallies remarkably well with the truth about primitive North America and its inhabitants. “They have no kind of metal,” reported this wandering refugee, who finally drifted back to the coast, and was able to make his escape to a fishing-boat. Now the one really remarkable and distinctive fact about the North Americans was just this,—that with a considerable advance in other directions, they had never learned to fuse and forge or otherwise utilize iron or other metals, save a little metallic copper and silver in the Great Lakes region. But listen to the rest of his brief report: They live by hunting, and carry lances of wood sharpened at the point. They have bows, the strings of which are made of beasts’ skins. They are very fierce, and have deadly fights amongst each other, and eat one another’s flesh [as was true, to a limited ceremonial extent, after battles]. They have chieftains and certain laws among themselves, but differing in the different tribes. The farther you go southwestward, however, the more refinement you meet with, because the climate is more temperate, and, accordingly, there [_i. e._, in Mexico] they have cities and temples dedicated to their idols, in which they sacrifice men and afterwards eat them. In those parts they have some knowledge of gold and silver.