The first voyage round the world, by Magellan : $b translated from the accounts of Pigafetta, and other contemporary writersPigafetta, Antonio
History
The first voyage round the world, by Magellan : $b translated from the accounts of Pigafetta, and other contemporary writers
Pigafetta, Antonio
Magalhães, Fernão de, -1521; Voyages around the world -- Early works to 1800
It must be known that when we wounded any of this kind of people with
our arrows, which entered inside their bodies, they looked at the
arrow, and then drew it forth with much astonishment, and immediately
afterwards they died.[251] Immediately after we sailed from that
island, following our course, and those people seeing that we were
going away followed us for a league, with a hundred small boats, or
more, and they approached our ships, showing to us fish, and feigning
to give it to us. But they threw stones at us, and then ran away, and
in their flight they passed with their little boats between the boat
which is towed at the poop and the ship going under full sail; but they
did this so quickly, and with such skill that it was a wonder. And
we saw some of these women, who cried out and tore their hair, and I
believe[252] that it was for the love of those whom we had killed.
CHAPTER.
These people live in liberty and according to their will, for they
have no lord or superior; they go quite naked, and some of them wear
beards, and have their hair down to the waist. They wear small hats,
after the fashion of the Albanians; these hats are made of palm leaves.
The people are as tall as us, and well made: they adore nothing,
and when they are born they are white, later they become brown, and
have their teeth black and red. The women also go naked, except that
they cover their nature with a thin bark, pliable like paper, which
grows between the tree and the bark of the palm. They are beautiful
and delicate, and whiter than the men, and have their hair loose and
flowing, very black and long, down to the earth. They do not go to work
in the fields, nor stir from their houses, making cloth and baskets of
palm leaves. Their provisions are certain fruits named Cochi, Battate;
there are birds, figs a palm long,[253] sweet canes, and flying fish.
The women anoint their bodies and their hair with oil of cocho and
giongioli (sesame). Their houses are constructed of wood, covered with
planks, with fig leaves, which are two ells in length: they have only
one floor: their rooms and beds are furnished with mats,[254] which
we call matting,[255] which are made of palm leaves, and are very
beautiful, and they lie down on palm straw, which is soft and fine.
These people have no arms, but use sticks,[256] which have a fish bone
at the end. They are poor, but ingenious, and great thieves, and for
the sake of that we called these three islands the Ladrone Islands. The
pastime of the men and the women of this place, and their diversion,
is to go with their little boats to catch those fish which fly, with
hooks made of fish bones. The pattern of their small boats is painted
here-after, they are like the fuseleres,[257] but narrower. Some of
them black and white, and others red. On the opposite side to the sail,
they have a large piece of wood, pointed above, with poles across,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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