Besides This Island, Here Are Nine Or Ten
Other Small Islands.
The inhabitants of this island are a sort of very tawny Indians,
with long black hair, who in their manners differ but little from
the Mindanayans, and others of these eastern islands.
These seem to
be the chief; for besides them we saw also shock curl pated New
Guinea negroes, many of which are slaves to the others, but I think
not all. They are very poor, wear no clothes but have a clout about
their middle, made of the rinds of the tops of palmetto trees; but
the women had a sort of calico cloth. Their chief ornaments are
blue and yellow beads, worn about their wrists. The men arm
themselves with bows and arrows, lances, broad swords, like those of
Mindanao; their lances are pointed with bone: they strike fish very
ingeniously with wooden fish-spears, and have a very ingenious way
of making the fish rise; for they have a piece of wood curiously
carved, and painted much like a dolphin (and perhaps other figures);
these they let down into the water by a line with a small weight to
sink it; when they think it low enough, they haul the line into
their boats very fast, and the fish rise up after this figure, and
they stand ready to strike them when they are near the surface of
the water. But their chief livelihood is from their plantations;
yet they have large boats, and go over to New Guinea, where they get
slaves, fine parrots, &c, which they carry to Goram and exchange for
calicoes.
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