Part 8 (2/2)
They thought the s.h.i.+ps were G.o.ds and the small boats the children of such beings, and when the latter approached the s.h.i.+ps they imagined that they were children come home to their fathers or mothers.
The s.h.i.+ps remained in this delightful country of Verzim thirteen weeks.
Pigafetta and Del Cano must have thought that life here was ideal. What scenes would follow?
CHAPTER IX.
PINEAPPLES, POTATOES, VERY OLD PEOPLE.
Other things were there on the wonderful Brazilian coast. There the mariners traded in them and were refreshed with a delicious fruit, called pique--pineapples.
They came to the knowledge here of a nutritious ground fruit called battate. ”This,” says our Italian, ”has the taste of a chestnut and is the length of a shuttle.” These ground fruits were potatoes.
The people here seem to have been very liberal in trading.
They would give six fowls for a knife--well they might do so, as they used stone implements.
They gave _two_ geese for a comb--here they were both generous and wise.
They gave as great a quant.i.ty of fish as ten men could eat for a pair of scissors.
And for a bell, they gave a whole basket full of potatoes (battate).
Marvelous indeed as was this same country of Verzim, it also abounded in the conditions and atmospheres of long life.
”Some of these people,” says our Italian chronicler, ”live to be a hundred or a hundred and twenty, or a hundred and forty or more. They wear little clothing.”
Which speaks well for pineapples, potatoes, and easy dress.
”They sleep on cotton nets, which are fastened on large timbers, and stretch from one end of the house to another.”
It is good to sleep in ample ventilation. We do not wonder that many of the people pa.s.sed a hundred years.
The boats of these people were as simple as their open houses.
”These are not made with iron instruments, for there are none, but with stones.”
The canoes were dug out of one long tree--some giant growth of the forest which would convey from thirty to forty men. The paddles for these canoes resembled shovels. The rowers were usually black men.
The people ate human flesh, but only at feasts of triumph. They then served up their enemies.
Pigafetta draws the following grewsome picture:
”They do not eat up the whole body of a man whom they take prisoner; they eat him bit by bit, and for fear that he should be spoiled, they cut him up into pieces, which they set to dry before the chimney. They eat this day by day, so as to keep in mind the memory of their enemy.”
This was indeed the sweet food of revenge, and as barbarous as it seems, the spirit of revenge secretly cherished is hardly less unworthy when it finds expression in words that are bitter, if not carnal.
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