Of their palm trees, which they keep with watering and cutting every year, they make velvets, satins, taffetas, damasks, sarsenets, and such like; out of the leaves, cleansed and purged, drawing long threads and even, for that purpose. They draw wine (as it is said) from the palm-tree. There is another kind of palm-tree which beareth a fruit good for the stomach and for the liver, and most admirable.[205] [_A Crocodile Story._] One crocodile was so huge and greedy that he devoured an _Alibamba_,[206] that is, a chained company of eight or nine slaves, but the indigestible iron paid him his wages, and murdered the murderer, found afterwards in his belly. I have seen them watch their prey, hauling in gennet, man, or other creature, into the water. But one soldier thus wrapt in shallower water drew his knife, took his taker in the belly, and slew him.] [THE END.] [Illustration] [Illustration] ON THE RELIGION AND THE CUSTOMS OF THE PEOPLES OF ANGOLA, CONGO AND LOANGO. The following notes on the religion and customs of the Negroes of Angola, Congo and Loango, are taken from Book vii, chapters ix and x, of _Purchas His Pilgrimage, or Relations of the World and the Religions observed in all Ages and Places discovered from the Creation unto this Present_. London (H. Fetherstone), 1617. This account is a compilation. Purchas quotes, among others, Duarte Lopez, De Barros, Osorio, Marmol, and Du Jarric. In what follows, we confine ourselves to the oral information which Purchas received from his friends or acquaintances, Andrew Battell and Thomas Turner. CHAP. IX, § I.—ANGOLA. [_The Slave Trade._] Master Thomas Turner, one that had lived a long time in Brasil, and had also been at Angola, reported to me[207] that it was supposed eight and twenty thousand slaves (a number almost incredible, yet such as the Portugals told him) were yearly shipped from Angola and Congo, at the Haven of Loanda.[208] He named to me a rich Portugal in Brasil, which had ten thousand of his own, working in his _Ingenios_[209] (of which he had eighteen) and in his other employments. His name was John du Paus, exiled from Portugal, and thus enriched in Brasil.[210] A thousand of his slaves at one time entered into conspiracy with nine thousand other slaves in the country, and barricaded themselves for their best defence against their master, who had much ado to reduce some of them into their former servitude. [_Fetishes._]