S. They Here Procured
Abundant Refreshments Of Fruits, Sugar-Canes, And Several Kinds Of
Animals.
Proceeding about 2 1/2 degrees farther south, they came into a country
inhabited by a wild sort of people, of prodigious stature, fierce and
barbarous, and making a strange roaring noise, more like the bellowing
of bulls, than human speech.
Notwithstanding their prodigious bulk,
these people were so nimble that none of the Spaniards or Portuguese
were swift enough to overtake them. At this place there was a fine river
of fresh water, the mouth of which was fully seventeen leagues wide, in
which there were seven islands, the largest of which they named the
island of St Mary, where they procured some jewels.[2] Proceeding
along this coast towards the south, they fell in with two islands so
abounding in seals and penguins, that they might have laden all their
five ships with them in a short time. The penguins are a black, heavy,
unwieldy fowl, extremely fat, covered with a sort of down instead of
feathers, and having a bill like that of a raven; drawing their entire
subsistence from the sea, as fish is their only food.
[Footnote 2: These jewels may possibly have been a few pearls. The
indications in the text are too vague to afford even a guess at the
situation of the river and its seven islands; only it may be mentioned,
that the most northern part of the coast of Patagonia is in lat. 38 deg.
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