- [Footnote: Noua Guinen.]
towards New Spaine, and he had sight of a land toward the South in two degrees, and he ran East along by it about fiue hundred leagues till the end of August.[1] The coast was cleane and of good ankerage, but the people blacke and of curled haire; from the girdle downward they did weare a certaine thing plaited to couer their lower parts.
Os Papuas are blacke people with frisled haire. The people of Maluco call them Papuas, because they be blacke and friseled in their haire: and so also doe the Portugals call them.
Isla de los Pintados. Saavedra hauing sailed 4. or 5. degrees to the South of the line, returned vnto it, and passed the Equinoctiall towards the north, and discouered an Iland which be called Isla de los Pintados, that is to say, The Isle of painted people: for the people thereof be white, and all of them marked with an iron: and by the signes which they gaue he conceaued that they were of China. There came vnto them from the shore a kinde of boate full of these men, making tokens of threatnings to the Spanyards; who seeing that the Spanyards would not obey them, they began to skirmish with slinging of stones, but Saavedra would suffer no shot to be shot at them, because their stones were of no strength, and did no harme.
Los Iardines. A little beyond this Island in 10. or 12. degrees, they found many small low Islands full of palme trees and grasse, which they called Los Iardines, and they came to an anker in the middest of them, where they taried certaine daies. The people seemed to descend from them of China, but by reason of their long continuance there they become so brutish, that they haue neither law, nor yet giue themselues to any honest labour. They weare white clothing which they make of grasse. They stand in maruailous feare of fire, because they neuer saw any. They eate Cocos in steede of bread, breaking them before they be ripe, and putting them vnder the sand, and then after certaine daies they take them out and lay them in the sonne, and then they will open.
Flote wood. They eate fish which they take in a kinde of boate called a Parao, which they make of pine wood, which is driuen thither at certaine times of the yeere, they know not how, nor from whence, and the tooles wherewith they make their boates are of shels.
Saavedra peceiuing that the time and weather was then some-*
- ↑ Gomera hist. gen. lib. 2. cap. 72.
