Upon This The Captain Of The Town Came Towards Us With His Dart In His Hand, Followed By Six Tall Men Each Of Whom Had A Dart And Target.

Their darts were all headed with iron well-fashioned and sharp.

After this party came another negro carrying the captains stool. We all saluted the captain respectfully, pulling off our caps and bowing to him; but he, seeming to consider himself as a man of consequence, did not move his cap in return, and gravely sat down on his stool, hardly inclining his body in return to our salute: All his attendants however, took off their caps and bowed to us.

[Footnote 244: Called St Johns twice before; and we shall see that they came to another town afterwards called Don Johns, more to the east, whence it appears that the Don John of the text here is an error for St John. - E.]

[Footnote 245: Probably musketoons or blunderbusses, and certainly some species of gun or fire-arm. - E.]

This chief was clothed from the loins downwards, with a cloth of the country manufacture, wrapped about him and made fast with a girdle round his waist, having a cap of the country cloth on his head, all his body above the loins with his legs and feet being bare. Some of his attendants had cloths about their loins, while others had only a clout between their legs, fastened before and behind to their girdles; having likewise caps on their heads of their own making, some made of basket-work, and others like a large wide purse of wild beast skins. All their cloth, girdles, fishing lines, and other such things, are made from the bark of certain trees, very neatly manufactured. They fabricate likewise all such iron implements as they use very artificially; such as the heads of their darts, fish-hooks, _hooking_ irons, _ironheads_, and great daggers, some of these last being as long as a bill hook, or woodcutters knife, very sharp on both sides and bent like a Turkish cymeter, and most of the men have such a dagger hanging on their left side. Their targets are made of the same materials with their cloths, very closely wrought, very large and of an oblong square form, somewhat longer than broad, so that when they kneel on the ground the target entirely covers their whole body. Their bows are short and tolerably strong, as much as a man is able to draw with one finger, and the string is made of the bark of a tree, made flat, and a quarter of an inch broad. I have not seen any of their arrows, as they were all close wrapped up, and I was so busily engaged in traffic that I had not leisure to get them opened out for my inspection. They have also the art to work up their gold into very pretty ornaments.

When the captain had taken his seat on the stool, I sent him as a present two ells of cloth and two basins, and he sent back for our weight and measure, on which I sent him a weight of two angels, and informed him that such was our price in gold for two ells, or the measure I had already sent him.

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