His Household Is Managed By Women, Who Are The
Daughters Of His Principal Courtiers.
This country affords camphor,
which is the gum of a tree called Capar; as also cinnamon, ginger,
myrabolans, oranges, lemons, sugar, cucumbers, melons, and other
fruits, with abundance of beasts and birds, and all other products of
the equinoctial climate.
The natives continually chew betel and areka,
and drink arrack.
Leaving Borneo, they went to the island of Cimbubon, in, lat. 8 deg. 7'
N.[15] where they remained forty days, caulking and repairing their
ships, and taking in a supply of fresh water. In the woods of this isle
they found a tree, the leaves of which, when they fall to the ground,
move from place to place as if alive. They resemble the leaves of the
mulberry, having certain fibres produced from their sides resembling
legs, and suddenly spring away when touched. Pigafetta, the author of
this relation, kept one of these leaf-animals in a dish for eight
days.[16] This isle produces ostriches, wild hogs, and crocodiles. They
caught here a fish having a head like a sow, with two horns, its body
consisting of one entire bone, and having a substance on its back
resembling a saddle.
[Footnote 15: Perhaps Balambangan, in 8 deg. 20' N.]
[Footnote 16: Harris observes, that this account is quite incredible:
Yet it is certainly true that an insect of this description exists,
though not the leaf of a tree, as erroneously supposed by
Pigafetta. - E.]
From hence they sailed to certain islands named Salo Taghima, which
produce fine pearls, and from whence the king of Borneo once procured
two large round pearls, nearly as big as eggs.
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