These people fight with stones, and have no other arms save a short stick to hit with. They are very daring and strong fighters on the land, which is very stony, and they defend it well. All of them go naked and only wear a fork of coloured palm-leaves round about them by way of breeches, which hideth their shame, but many of them lack even this. They possess neither gold, nor silver, or money, nor jewels, nor any engines of warfare, save some things they make with stones, which they use in the place of hangers, and with which they also construct the houses wherein they dwell. They hold all gold and silver and every other metal in disdain, counting it folly in him who desireth them, and commonly there is none among them that hath a different opinion from the others. Neither care they for clothes of any kind, much or little; but rather they mock at the man who prizeth them, as they do with one who prizeth gold and silver, and all the other things I have mentioned; only they set great store on iron, which they fashion by the aid of these stones and make hooks of it to fish with. They have wheat and barley, but they are without the wit to make bread, and only make meal which they devour with flesh and butter. And they have many figs and dragon's blood trees, and dates, though poor ones, and they have also herbs which they eat. And they possess moreover sheep and goats and a sufficiency of pigs. And they number five thousand fighting men, as I have said above. They only shave with stones. Some of them call themselves Christians; and after the Infant sent Don Fernando de Castro there with his fleet, in the which he carried two thousand and five hundred men and one hundred and twenty horses, many of them became Christians; and because Don Fernando was fearful that the victuals he carried would not last, he left without conquering them altogether. And afterwards the Infant wished to send another expedition there, but the King of Castile interfered in the matter, saying that the Islands belonged to his conquest, which of a surety is not so. And hereby this very pious undertaking, to wit, that this people might live under the law of Christ, still remained to be accomplished. But this fleet was dispatched there in the year of Christ one thousand four hundred twenty and four. The inhabitants of the island think it a great evil to kill flesh or skin it, and so if they get a Christian from abroad, they are rejoiced for him to be their butcher. And when they cannot obtain as many as they need for that trade, they seek out the worst men in the island for this charge, and the women will have nothing to do with these persons, and the men will not eat with them, for they hold them to be worse than lepers among us. They light fires by sticks, rubbing one against the other. The mothers suckle their children with disgust, so that the greater part of the rearing of their babies is done by the teats of she-goats. CHAPTER LXXX.