Their Food Consists Of Cocoa-Nuts, Bananas,
Figs, Sugar-Canes, Fowls, And Flying-Fishes.
Their canoes are oddly
contrived and patched up, yet sail with wonderful rapidity, the sails
being made of broad leaves sewed together.
Instead of a rudder they use
a large board, with a staff or pole at one end, and in sailing, either
end of their canoes is indifferently used as head or stern. They paint
their canoes all over, either red, white, or black, as hits their fancy.
These people are so taken with any thing that is new, that when the
Spaniards wounded several of them with their arrows, and even pierced
some quite through, they would pluck out the arrows from their wounds,
and stare at them till they died. Yet would they still continue to
follow after the ships, to gaze upon them as they were going away, so
that at one time they were closely surrounded by at least two hundred
canoes filled with natives, admiring those wonderful contrivances.
The 10th of March, the Spaniards landed on the island of Zamul, about
30 leagues from the Ladrones.[7] Next day they landed on Humuna, an
island not inhabited, yet well deserving of being so, where they found
springs of excellent water, with abundance of fruit-trees, gold, and
white coral. Magellan named this the island of good signs. The natives
from some of the neighbouring islands, a people of much humanity, came
here to them shortly after, very fair and of friendly dispositions, who
seemed well pleased at the arrival of the Spaniards among them, and came
loaded with presents of fish, and wine made from the cocoa-tree,
promising speedily to bring other provisions.
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