the greater part of the year, they live on millet, borona, roasted bananas, certain roots resembling sweet potatoes and called oropisa, as well as on yams [yuñames] and camotes,[1] whose leaves they also eat, boiled. They eat Castilian fowls and pork. In the islands inhabited by Moros, some goats are raised; but there are so few of them that wherever fifteen or twenty Spaniards arrive, no goats will be seen for the next two or three years. The cocoa-palm offers the greatest means of sustenance to the natives, for they obtain from it wine, fruit, oil, and vinegar. These people eat many kinds of herbs which grow both on land and in the sea. Some of these herbs have been used by our people as articles of food. The scarcity of all kinds of food here is such that—with all that is brought continually from all these islands, in three frigates, one patache, and all the other native boats that could be obtained—each soldier or captain could only receive [as his rations] each week two almudes of unwinnowed rice—which, when winnowed, yielded no more than three cuartillos. This ration was accompanied by nothing else, neither meat nor fish.
The natives sustain life by eating little and drinking much—so heavily, that it is a marvel if they are not drunken all the time, or at least from noon on. And the more important their position, the more intoxicated do they become, for they have more to spend for this purpose. The inhabitants of the coast are fishermen who barter their fish and buy from those living inland, who till the soil, the above-named foods. They eat all kinds of shell-fish and slimy plants which grow at the bottom of the sea.
- ↑ Camote: the sweet potato (Ipomœa batatas).
