[51] MS. 5,650 reads: “veal.” The anta is the tapir, once very plentiful in South America, but now rare in the well civilized districts. See Burton’s Captivity of Hans Stade, p. viii. Albo, however, seems to designate the llama by this name, for he says when speaking of the stay at Bay St. Julian: “and many Indians came there, who are clad in certain skins of antas, which resemble camels without the hump.” (Navarrete, Col. de viages, iv, p. 214).
[52] Stanley mistranslates the French phrase of MS. 5,650 et est de la longueur dun naveau, “and is of the length of a shuttle,” confusing naveau with navette, “shuttle.” Naveau here is equivalent to navet, “turnip” or navette, “rape,” a plant of the turnip class, as is proved by the Italian.
[53] MS. 5,650 reads: “And for a king of cards, of the kind which are used to play with in Italy, they gave me five fowls.” The four suits of Italian playing cards are called spade (“swords”), bastoni (“clubs”), danari (literally: “money;” “diamonds”), and coppe (“cups”).
[54] MS. 5,650 reads: “five.”
[55] MS. 5,650 adds: “which is an astrological term. That zenith is a point in the sky, according to astrologers, but only in the imagination, and is in a straight line over our head, as can be seen by the treatise of the sphere, and in Aristotle, in the first book De caelo et mondo.” By the treatise of the sphere is evidently meant the treatise of Pigafetta which follows his relation, and which is not reproduced here as being outside the scope of the present work. In the flyleaf of the Italian original is the following: “Notices concerning the new world, with the charts of the countries discovered, written by Antonio Pigafeta, Venetian and knight of Rodi. At the end are added some rules for finding the longitude and latitude of places east and west.” In the Italian MS. this treatise occupies the last twelve folios. Stanley translates Amoretti’s version of the Treatise, which is greatly abridged. Mosto (p. 35) conjectures that the treatise is the fruits of his three-years’ experience during the expedition.
[56] Albo (Navarrete, iv, p. 210) says that the fleet continued to coast southwest from November 29 until arriving at St. Lucy’s bay on December 13 (St. Lucy’s day). Of the coast he says: “The mountains are peaked and have many reefs about them. There are many rivers and ports in the said Brasil and San Tomé, and some six leguas down the coast there are many bays running two leguas into the land. But the coast runs northeast and southwest to Cape Frio, and has many islands and rivers. Cape Frio is a very large river.... At the entrance of the said bay is a very large bay, and at the mouth a very low island, and inside it spreads out extensively and has many ports ... and is called the bay of Santa Lucía.... In the said bay, one finds a well-disposed and numerous race, who go naked and trade for fishhooks, mirrors, and hawk’s bells with food.... We entered that place on the very day of St. Lucy, and stayed there until the day of St. John, namely, the twenty-seventh of the said month of December. On that day we went and took our course west southwest, and found seven islands. To the right of them is a bay called the bay of Los Reyes [i.e., the Kings] which has a good entrance.” The “Roteiro” (Stanley, p. 1) says: “as soon as they sighted the other coast of Brazil, he steered to the south-east [sic] along the coast as far as Cabo-frio, which is in twenty-three degrees south latitude; and from this cape he steered to the west, a matter of thirty leagues, to make the Rio de Janeiro, which is in the same latitude as Cabo-frio, and they entered the said river on the day of St. Lucy, which was the 13th December, in which place they took in wood, and they remained there until the first octave of Christmas, which was the 26th of December of the same year.” Brito (Navarrete, iv, p. 306) says: “Setting sail thence [i.e., from Tenerife], the first land sighted was the cape of the shoals of Ambas. They descended the coast as far as the river called Janeiro, where they stayed 15 or 16 days.”
[57] Eden (p. 251) says: “bygger then all Spayne, Portugale, Fraunce, and Italie.”
[58] MS. 5,650 adds: “more like beasts than anything else.”
[59] MS. 5,650 reads: “And some of those people live to the age of one hundred, one hundred and twenty, one hundred and forty, or more.” Eden (p. 251) says: “C.xx. and C.xl. yeares.” For description of the Brazil Indians, and their manners and customs, see Captivity of Hans Stade (Hakluyt Society edition), pp. 117–169.
[60] Wrongly transcribed by Stanley as “boy.”