[71] The swine mentioned by Pigafetta is the Tayasu (Tagaçu), or peccari (Dicotyles torquatus), which has quills resembling those of the porcupine, and is generally of a whitish color. It is tailless and very fierce and difficult to domesticate. The flesh was eaten; and the teeth were worn by some of the chiefs as necklaces. Burton (ut supra), p. 160, note.
[72] The Platalea ajaja or rosy spoonbill, belonging to the family of the Plataleidæ, whose habitat extends through all of tropical and subtropical America, including the West Indies, south to the Falkland Islands, Patagonia and Chile, and north to the southern part of the United States.
[73] Hans Stade (Burton, ut supra) testifies to the chastity of the people of Eastern Brazil among whom he lived as a prisoner.
[74] MS. 5,650 reads: “The women attend to the outside affairs, and carry everything necessary for their husband’s food in small panniers on the head or fastened to the head.”
[75] MS. 5,650 adds: “and compassion.”
[76] MS. 5,650 reads: “When we departed they gave us a very great quantity of verzin;” and adds: “That is a color which comes from trees which grow in the said country, and so abundantly, that the country is called Verzin from it.”
[77] MS. adds: “which was a piece of great simplicity.”
[78] This sentence is preceded by the following in MS. 5,650: “Besides the abovesaid which proclaims their simplicity, the people of the above place showed us another very simple thing.”
[79] This passage in Stanley reads as follows: “A beautiful young girl came one day inside the ship of our captain, where I was, and did not come except to seek for her luck: however, she directed her looks to the cabin of the master, and saw a nail, of a finger’s length, and went and took it as something valuable and new, and hid it in her hair, for otherwise she would not have been able to conceal it, because she was naked, and, bending forwards, she went away; and the captain and I saw this mystery.” The matter between the words “length” and “naked” is taken from MS. 24,224 (wrongly declared by Stanley to be the copy of his travels presented to the regent Louise by Pigafetta, the conclusion being based on the fact that some of the details are softened down), as Stanley considered the incident as told in MS. 5,650, the Italian MS. and the first French edition, as unfit for publication. Stanley cites the following (in the original) from the edition of 1536 which omits the above story: “At the first land at which we stopped, some female slaves whom we had brought in the ships from other countries and who were heavy with child, were taken with the pains of childbirth. Consequently, they went alone out of the ships, went ashore, and after having given birth, returned immediately to the ships with their infants in their arms.” He also cites the following passage from the first French printed edition, which also narrates the above story of the girl: “At the first coast that we passed, some slave women gave birth. When they were in travail, they left the boat, after which they immediately returned, and nursed their children.” Stanley adds that this story of the slave women is improbable, as women were not allowed to come aboard ship.
[80] MS. 5,650 gives the words of the Brazil as follows: “maiz, huy, pinda, taesse, chignap, pirame, itenmaraca, tum maraghatom.” Amoretti (see Stanley’s edition, p. 48) reads tacse as tarse and itanmaraca as Hanmaraca. Stanley mistranslates the French forcette (“scissors”) as “fork.”