They Wrap These Up Singly In Certain Leaves, And
Having Dried Them In An Oven They Will Keep A Great While.
They also catch
pilchards in the same manner; for at certain times these fly with such
violence from the
Pursuit of the large fish, that they will leap out of
the water two or three paces on the dry land, so that they have nothing to
do but take them as they do the Titi. These pilchards are taken after
another manner: They raise a partition of palm-tree leaves two yards high
in the middle of a canoe, fore and aft as the seamen call it, or from stem
to stern; then plying about the river they make a great noise, beating the
shores with their paddles, and then the pilchards, to fly from the other
fish, leap into the canoe, where hitting against the partition they fall
in, and by this means they often take vast numbers[15]. Several sorts of
fish pass along the coast in vast shoals, whereof immense quantities are
taken; and these will keep a long time after being roasted or dried in the
way already mentioned.
These Indians have also abundance of maize, a species of grain which grows
in an ear or hard head like millet, and from which they make a white and
red wine, as beer is made in England, mixing it with their spice as it
suits their palate, having a pleasant taste like sharp brisk wine. They
also make another sort of wine from certain trees like palms which have
prickly trunks like thorns: This wine is made from the pith of these palms,
which resemble squeezed palmitoes, and from which they extract the juice
and boil it up with water and spice. They make another wine from a fruit
which grows likewise in Guadaloup, resembling a large pine-apple. This is
planted in large fields, and the plant is a sprout growing from the top of
the fruit, like that which grows from a cabbage or lettuce. One plant
lasts in bearing for three or four years. They likewise make wines from
other sorts of fruit; particularly from one that grows upon very high
trees, which is as big as a large lemon, and has several stones like nuts,
from two to nine in each, not round but long like chesnuts. The rind of
this fruit is like a pomegranate, and when first taken from the tree it
resembles it exactly, save only that it wants the prickly circle at the
top. The taste of it is like a peach; and of them some are better than
others, as is usual in other fruits. There are some of these in the
islands, where they are named Mamei by the Indians.
All things being settled for the Christian colony and ten or twelve houses
built and thatched, the admiral wished to have sailed for Spain; but he
was now threatened by even a greater danger from want of water in the
river, than that he had formerly experienced by the inundation.
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