[30] See p. 97.
[31] They told Magellan that they worshipped nothing, but that they believed in a god called Abba, who lived in the sky, and to him they raised their faces and their clasped hands when anxious to appeal to him.
[32] The queen was young and beautiful, and entirely covered with a white and black cloth. Her mouth and nails were stained very red, while on her head she wore a large hat of palm leaves, like a tiara.
[33] One of these was the celebrated Duarte Barbosa, commander of the Trinidad, whose book on his travels in India and Further India is much quoted by me in Pioneers in India, &c.
[34] Some of these (including the women) were set free in the Moluccas, others died on the voyage, but a few actually did reach Seville, and with one exception, after being carefully instructed in Christianity and the Spanish language, were sent back to the Philippines in 1527. The exception was a Malay who showed himself so extraordinarily clever about money matters and trade that the Spaniards feared if he returned to the Far East he might be a little too knowing in appraising the value of European trade goods. So he apparently ended his days in Spain.
[35] The camphor of Malaysia is a crystalline secretion found in the crevices of the bark of a magnificent tree, the Dryobalanops aromatica. The camphor more commonly met with in commerce is derived from the bark of a kind of laurel growing in Japan and Formosa. Myrobalans are the fruit of a tall Terminalia tree of the Combretaceæ family. They are plum-like in appearance and very astringent. The kernels are eaten, but the rind is used for making ink and very dark dyes.
[36] These were no doubt examples of the genus Phyllum, insects of the Phasmidæ family (allied to Mantises). The resemblance to leaves in the Phylli is extraordinary, especially in the female insect, even the egg capsules are just like seeds.
[37] The appearances, of course, were nothing but the displays of electricity which in violent storms show themselves like white globes of flame or torches in the upper parts of the masts and rigging, and are known generally as "corposants" or St. Elmo's Fires.
[38] He pronounced the name Jailolo. This large island, which in shape is an extraordinary repetition on a smaller scale of the still larger Celebes, is also known as Halmahera.
[39] They may have been the Standard-bearer Paradise Bird (Semioptera), from the Island of Jilolo, which is fawn colour, with blue and emerald gorget, and large waving plume feathers rising up from the quills of the wings.