In this port they refitted the ship. Here the captain-major made Alvaro
de Mesquita, a Portuguese, a captain of one of the ships the captain of
which had been killed. There sailed from this port on August 24th four
ships, for the smallest of the ships had been already lost; he had sent
it to reconnoitre, and the weather had been heavy and had cast it
ashore, where all the crew had been recovered along with the
merchandise, artillery, and fittings of the ship. They remained in this
port, in which they wintered, five months and twenty-four days, and they
were 70 deg. less ten minutes to the southward.
They sailed on August 24th of the said year from this port of St.
Julian, and navigated a matter of twenty leagues along the coast, and so
they entered a river which was called Santa Cruz, which is in 50 deg., where
they took in goods and as much as they could obtain. The crew of the
lost ship were already distributed among the other ships, for they had
returned by land to where Ferdinand Magellan was, and they continued
collecting goods which had remained there during August and up to
September 18th, and there they took in water and much fish which they
caught in this river; and in the other, where they wintered, there were
people like savages, and the men are from nine to ten spans in height,
very well made; they have not got houses, they only go about from one
place to another with their flocks, and eat meat nearly raw. They are
all of them archers, and kill many animals with arrows, and with the
skins they make clothes, that is to say, they make the skins very
supple, and fashion them after the shape of the body, as well as they
can, then they cover themselves with them, and fasten them by a belt
round the waist. When they do not wish to be clothed from the waist
upward, they let that half fall which is above the waist, and the
garment remains hanging down from the belt which they have girt around
them.
They wear shoes which cover them four inches above the ankle, full of
straw inside to keep their feet warm. They do not possess any iron, nor
any other ingenuity of weapons, only they make the points of their
arrows with flints, and so also the knives with which they cut, and the
adze and awls with which they cut and stitch their shoes and clothes.
They are very agile people and do no harm, and thus follow their flocks;
wherever night finds them, there they sleep; they carry their wives
along with them, with all the chattels they possess. The women are very
small and carry heavy burdens on their backs. They wear shoes and
clothes just like the men. Of these men they obtained three or four and
brought them in the ships, and they all died except one, who went to
Castile in a ship which went thither.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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