In
Their Dress, The Natives Wear Mantles Or Cloaks Of Cotton, Silk, Or
Camblet, Always Having One Arm Bare.
They have no defensive armour, as
they are hardly ever at war; but when they go to sea they
Use bows and
arrows, and likewise poisoned arrows made of reeds, which they blow from
long hollow canes, and the poison with which these arrows are infected
is so virulent that death certainly follows from the slightest wound.
They have no kind of fire-arms. They eat all kinds of flesh, fish, or
fruit, as they please or can procure.
Some of the natives of this island are so very barbarous, that when
their parents become feeble from age, so as to be useless to themselves
and others, they bring them into the public market and sell them to the
cannibals who eat human flesh, who immediately upon buying them, kill
and eat them. Likewise when any young person falls into disease of which
they do not expect he shall recover, his kinsmen sell him in the same
manner to the cannibals. When my companion expressed his horror at this
barbarous and savage practice, a certain native merchant observed, "That
no sacrifice could redeem the sins of the Persians, who gave the flesh
of their dead to be eaten by the worms." Abhorring these savage manners,
we returned to our ship not willing to tarry longer in that island.
While we were there, the Christian merchants, who were ever desirous to
shew us strange things which we might relate at our return to our own
country, made us remark that the sun at noon-day was to the north of us,
which as they said is always the case in the month of July.
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