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SKIRMISH WITH ISLANDERS
69

CHAPTER

It must be known that when we wounded any of this kind of people with our arrows, which entered inside their bodies, they looked at the arrow, and then drew it forth with much astonishment, and immediately afterwards they died.[1] Immediately after we sailed from that island, following our course, and those people seeing that we were going away followed us for n league, with a hundred small boats, or more, and they approached our ships, showing to us fish, and feigning to give it to us. But they threw stones at us, and then ran away, and in their flight they passed with their little boats between the boat which is towed at the poop and the ship going under full sail; but they did this so quickly, and with such skill that it was a wonder. And we saw some of these women, who cried out and tore their hair, and I believe[2] that it was for the love of those whom we had killed.



CHAPTER

These people live in liberty and according to their will, for they have no lord or superior; they go quite naked, and some of them wear beards, and have their hair down to the waist. They wear small hats, after the fashion of the Albanians; these hats are made of palm leaves. The people are as tall as us, and well made: they adore nothing, and when they are born they are white, later they become brown, and have their teeth black and red. The women also go naked, except that they cover their nature with a thin bark, pliable like paper, which grows between the tree and the

  1. The Milan edition has here: "Which did not fail to cause compassion."
  2. The Milan edition has for "I believe", "certainly".