continually issueth forth, there dwell six thousand fighting men. The seventh island they call Grand Canary, in which there will be five thousand fighting men. These three islands, from the commencement of the world, have never been subdued, but many men have already been carried off from them, and by means of these nearly all their manner of life hath been learnt. And because they seemed to me very different from the usage of other races, I would here discourse a little about it, so that those who have received such grace from the Lord that they are outside the tale of such bestiality, may praise the Lord for it, because it pleased Him that all things should be made in such different manners, and that those who are placed in the holy law of Christ, and for His love would suffer some hardness of life, may get them great courage to enable them to support it well, when they recollect that these others are men likewise and that they spend such a hard and rough life with pleasure and delight to themselves. Now of all these islands which I have already named Grand Canary is the largest, and it will be in circumference six-and-thirty leagues. Its people are not without cunning, but of little good faith; and they know that there is a God from whom those who work good will receive good, and those who work evil will receive evil. And they have two men amongst them whom they call kings, and one duke, but all the rule of the island is in the hands of certain knights, who cannot be less than one hundred and ninety in number, nor as many as two hundred. And when five or six of these are dead, the other knights meet together and select as many more of them who are also the sons of knights, for they must not choose others, and these they put in the place of those who are dead, so that the number may always be full. And some declare that these men are of the noblest birth recorded, for they have ever been of the lineage of knights without admixture of villein blood. And these knights know their creed, but the others know nothing of it, but say only that they believe what their knights believe. And they must violate all the virgin girls, and after one of the knights hath slept with the girl, then her father or he may marry her to whomsoever he pleaseth. But before they sleep with them they fatten them with milk until their skin is wrinkled like that of a fig, for they hold that the thin girl is not as good as the fat one; and they say that so the womb is enlarged, enabling them to bear big children. And so, when she is stout, they exhibit her naked to those knights, and he who hath a mind to violate her, telleth her father that she is now fat enough. And her father or mother maketh her enter into the sea during some days for a certain time in each day, and she is then relieved of some of her excessive fatness, and then they take her to the knight, and when she hath been violated her father taketh her home.