[61] MS. 5,650 reads: “You must know that a family of one hundred persons, who make a great racket, lives in each of those houses called boii.” One of these houses (called Oca, in Tupi) is described by Wilson (Transactions of Ethnological Society, new series, vol. i) as being “60 or 70 feet long, divided into rooms for several families by rush mats, and provided with a central fire whose smoke passed through the roof. Some of them contained 200 head.” See Burton’s Captivity of Hans Stade, pp. 59, 60, note. The Indians described by Pigafetta are probably the Tamoyos of the Tupi or Guarani stock (Mosto, p. 56, note 1; see also Burton, ut supra, pp. lxi-lxxvi).
[62] Amoretti makes this passage read: “Their boats, called canoes, are hollowed out from the single trunk of a huge tree;” understanding maschize as massiccio “huge.” Mosto prefers to read maschize as two words ma schize (notwithstanding that it is one word in the original), for ma schiacciate, “but flattened.” Accepting this, the translation would be: “They have boats made from one single tree, only flattened.” Amoretti’s interpretation is to be preferred.
[63] MS. 5,650 reads: “and one would believe them to be enemies from hell.”
[64] MS. 5,650 adds: “of the said country of Verzin.”
[65] MS. 5,650 reads: “daily.” Amerigo Vespucci says in a letter (Mosto, p. 55, note 6): “I saw human flesh salted and suspended from the beams, in the same way as we are wont to hang up bacon and swine’s flesh.” See Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (Cleveland reissue), for instances of cannibalism among the North American Indians. See also Captivity of Hans Stade (Hakluyt Society edition), pp. 151, 155–159; and Dominguez’s Conquest of the River Plate (Hakluyt Society publications, London, 1891), pp. 129, 130.
[66] For Carvagio, as in MS. 5,650, and later in the Italian; an error of the amanuensis. This was João Carvalho (the Juan Lopez Caraballo of the register—see note 26, ante). Carvalho was a Portuguese, of none too scrupulous morals, even in his age, as appears later in Pigafetta’s narrative. After the fatal banquet in the island of Cebú, he became the leader of the remaining men of the fleet, but was later deposed (see post, note 441). He remained behind with the ill-fated “Trinidad,” and never returned to Europe. His son, borne to him by a native woman of Brazil, was left behind in Borneo. See Stanley, pp. 252–255, for Correa’s account of the actions of Carvalho after the death of Magalhães.
[67] The early French edition and the Italian edition of 1536 both include the women and children.—Stanley.
[68] It is a widespread (perhaps universal) characteristic of the American Indian to pull out the hair of the body. See Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (Cleveland reissue).
[69] Eden (p. 45), defines gatti mammoni as monkeys. Monkeys of the genus Cebus are probably meant (Mosto, p. 55, note 8).
[70] MS. 5,650 reads: “fresh cheese.” Pigafetta may here refer to the bread made from the casava or manioc root. See Burton’s Captivity of Hans Stade, pp. 130–132, for a description of the method of preparing this root.