since we were so reduced by hunger and so badly supplied, that we were several times on the point of abandoning the ships, and establishing ourselves on some land, in order to live. In this island, which we learned was named Palaoan, we found pigs, goats, fowls, yams, bananas of various kinds, some of which are half a cubit long, and as thick as the arm, others are only a span long, and others are still smaller, and these are the best; they have cocoa nuts, sugar canes, and certain roots like turnips. They cook rice under the fire in bamboo canes, or wooden vessels, and it keeps longer than that cooked in earthen pots. They draw from the rice with a kind of alembic a wine that is better and stronger than the palm wine. In short we found this island to be a promised land.
We presented ourselves to the king, who contracted alliance and friendship with us, and to assure us of it, he asked for one of our knives, with which he drew blood from his breast, with which he touched his forehead and tongue. We repeated the same ceremony.[1]
The people of Palaoan go naked like the other islanders, they almost all till their own fields. They have blow-pipes, with thick arrows more than a span in length, with a point like that of a harpoon; some have a point made with a fish bone, and others are of reed, poisoned with a certain herb; the arrows are not trimmed with feathers, but with a soft light wood. At the foot of the blow-pipe they bind a piece of iron, by means of which, when they have no more arrows, they wield the blow-pipe like a lance. They like to adorn themselves with rings and chains of gimp and with little bells, but above all they are fond of brass wire, with which they bind their fish hooks. They have some rather large domestic cocks, which, from some superstition, they do not eat, but they keep them for fighting; on such occasions they
- ↑ This paragraph is not in Amoretti's edition, and is taken from the French edition of 1802.
