The People Of This Country Are Much Like Those Of The Islands, But Their
Foreheads Are Not So High, Neither
Did they appear to have any religion.
There are several languages or dialects among them, and for the most part
They go naked, except the clout before mentioned, though some of them wore
a kind of short jerkin without sleeves, reaching to the navel. Their arms
and bodies have figures wrought upon them with fire, which gave them an
odd appearance; some having lions or deer, and others castles, with towers
or other strange figures painted on their bodies. Instead of caps, the
better sort wore red and white cotton cloths on their heads, and some had
locks of hair hanging from their foreheads. When they mean to be very fine
upon a day of festival, they colour their faces, some black and some red,
and others draw streaks of several colours; some paint their noses, others
black their eyes, and thus adorning, themselves as they think to look
beautiful, they look in truth like devils.
The admiral sailed along the coast de las Orejas, or the Mosquito shore,
eastwards to Cape Garcias a Dios, or Thanks be to GOD, so called on
account of the difficulty of getting there, having laboured seventy days
to get only sixty leagues to the eastwards of Cape Casinas or Honduras.
This was occasioned by opposing currents and contrary winds, so that we
had continually to tack out to sea and stand in again, sometimes gaining,
and sometimes losing ground, according as the wind happened to be scant or
large when we put about. And had not the coast afforded such good
anchoring we had been much longer upon it; but being free from shoals or
rocks, and having always two fathoms of water at half a league from the
shore, and two more at every league farther distant, we had always the
convenience of anchoring every night when there was little wind. When on
the 14th of September we reached the cape, and found the land turned off
to the southwards, so that we could conveniently continue our voyage with
those levanters or east winds that so continually prevailed, we all gave
thanks to GOD for the happy change, for which reason the admiral gave it
the name of Cape Garcias a Dios. A little beyond that cape we passed by
some dangerous sands, that ran out to sea as far as the eye could reach.
It being requisite to take in wood and water, the boats were sent on the
16th of September to a river that seemed deep and to have a good entrance,
but the coming out proved disastrous, for the wind freshening from the sea,
and the waves running high against the current of the river, so distressed
the boats, that one of them was lost with all the men in it; for which the
admiral named it Rio de la Disgratia, or the River of Disaster. In this
river, and about it, there grew canes as thick as a mans leg.
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