They gave as great a quantity of fish as ten men could eat for a pair of scissors.
And for a bell, they gave a whole basket full of potatoes (battate).
Marvelous indeed as was this same country of Verzim, it also abounded in the conditions and atmospheres of long life.
"Some of these people," says our Italian chronicler, "live to be a hundred or a hundred and twenty, or a hundred and forty or more. They wear little clothing."
Which speaks well for pineapples, potatoes, and easy dress.
"They sleep on cotton nets, which are fastened on large timbers, and stretch from one end of the house to another."
It is good to sleep in ample ventilation. We do not wonder that many of the people passed a hundred years.
The boats of these people were as simple as their open houses.
"These are not made with iron instruments, for there are none, but with stones."
The canoes were dug out of one long tree—some giant growth of the forest which would convey from thirty to forty men. The paddles for these canoes resembled shovels. The rowers were usually black men.