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.

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