This island had many goodly woods full of deer, coneys, hares, and fowl,
even in the midst of summer, in incredible abundance. The woods were not
such as you find in Bohemia, Moscovia, or Hercynia, barren and
fruitless, but the highest and reddest cedars of the world, far
bettering the cedars of the Azores, of the Indies, or Libanus; pines,
cypress, sassafras, the lentisk, or the tree that beareth the mastic;
the tree that beareth the rind of black cinnamon, of which Master Winter
brought from the Straits of Magellan; and many other of excellent smell
and quality. We remained by the side of this island two whole days
before we saw any people of the country. The third day we espied one
small boat rowing toward us, having in it three persons. This boat came
to the island side, four arquebuse-shot from our ships; and there two of
the people remaining, the third came along the shore side toward us, and
we being then all within board, he walked up and down upon the point of
the land next unto us.
Then the master and the pilot of the admiral, Simon Ferdinando, and the
captain, Philip Amidas, myself, and others, rowed to the land; whose
coming this fellow attended, never making any shew of fear or doubt. And
after he had spoken of many things, not understood by us, we brought
him, with his own good liking, aboard the ships, and gave him a shirt, a
hat, and some other things, and made him taste of our wine and our meat,
which he liked very well; and after having viewed both barks, he
departed, and went to his own boat again, which he had left in a little
cove or creek adjoining. As soon as he was two bow-shot into the water
he fell to fishing, and in less than half an hour he had laden his boat
as deep as it could swim, with which he came again to the point of the
land, and there he divided his fish into two parts, pointing one part to
the ship and the other to the pinnace. Which, after he had, as much as
he might, requited the former benefits received, departed out of our
sight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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