All This Coast Is Much Infested With Ravenous
Beasts, Monkeys, And Serpents, Of Which Last Here Are Some Seven
Feet
In length, and thicker than an ordinary man; in the head of
this serpent is found a stone about the
Bigness of an egg,
resembling bezoar, and of great efficacy, as it is said, against all
kinds of poison. I stayed here some time to inform myself whether I
might, by pursuing this road, reach Abyssinia; and could get no
other intelligence but that two thousand Galles (the same people who
inhabited Melinda) had encamped about three leagues from Jubo; that
they had been induced to fix in that place by the plenty of
provisions they found there. These Galles lay everything where they
come in ruin, putting all to the sword without distinction of age or
sex; which barbarities, though their numbers are not great, have
spread the terror of them over all the country. They choose a king,
whom they call Lubo: every eighth year they carry their wives with
them, and expose their children without any tenderness in the woods,
it being prohibited, on pain of death, to take any care of those
which are born in the camp. This is their way of living when they
are in arms, but afterwards when they settle at home they breed up
their children. They feed upon raw cow's flesh; when they kill a
cow, they keep the blood to rub their bodies with, and wear the guts
about their necks for ornaments, which they afterwards give to their
wives.
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