This is the phrase of Pigafetta, the young Italian gentleman to whose naïve book we owe our best and fullest account of the great voyage. It is clear enough that all the crews enjoyed their stay in the Bay of Santa Lucia, by which name they called our Bay of Rio de Janeiro. It was in the heart of the Brazilian summer, for they arrived on the 13th of December. They had been nearly three months at sea, and were well disposed to enjoy tropical luxuries; and here they stayed thirteen days. Pigafetta describes the Brazilian hammocks;[1593] and from his description Europe has taken that word. The same may perhaps be said of the mysterious word “canoe,” which appears in his narrative under the spelling “canots.”[1594]
It was Pigafetta’s first taste of the luxuries of the South American fields and forests, and he delighted in their cheapness and variety. “For a king of clubs I bought six chickens,” he writes; “and yet the Brazilian thought he had made the best bargain,”—as, indeed, in the condition of the fine arts at Santa Lucia, he had. A knife or a hook, however, bought no more; yet the natives had no tools of metal. Their large canoes, which would carry thirty or forty people, were painfully dug out by knives of stone from the great trees of which they were made. The Spaniards ate the pineapple for the first time. Pigafetta does not seem to have known the sugar-cane before; and he describes the sweet potato as a novelty. “It has almost the form of our turnip, and its taste resembles that of chestnuts.” Here, also, he gives the name “patata,” which has clung to this root, and has been transferred to the white potato also. For a ribbon, or a hawk’s bell, the natives sold a “basketful.” Their successors would doubtless do the same now.
INDIAN BEDS.
[This is Benzoni’s representation of the hammocks which are used by the natives of the northern shores of South America (edition of 1572, p. 56). See also the second volume, p. 11.—Ed.]
The Spaniards found the Brazilians perfectly willing to trade. They went wholly naked,—men and women. Their houses were long cabins.[1595] The people told stories, which the navigators believed, of the very great age of their old men, extending it even to one hundred and forty years. They owned that they were cannibals on occasion; but they seem to have eaten human flesh only as a symbol of triumph over conquered enemies. They painted their bodies, and wore their hair short. Pigafetta says it was woolly; but this must have been a mistake. Although he says they go naked, he describes a sort of vest made of paroquet’s feathers. Almost all the men had the lower lip pierced with three holes, and wore in them little cylinders of stone two inches long. They ate cassava bread, made in round white cakes from the root of the manioc.[1596] The voyagers also observed the pecari[1597] and those curious ducks “whose beak is like a spoon,” described by later travellers.[1598]
PART OF SOUTH AMERICA IN THE PTOLEMY OF 1522.
[A part of the “Tabula Terra Nova” in the Ptolemy of 1522, showing the acts of cannibals. Similar representations appeared on various other maps of South America. Cf. Münster’s map of 1540. Vespucius, in his letter to Lorenzo de’ Medici, was the first to describe the cannibalism of the Brazilians. Cf. Thevet, Singularitez de la France antarctique, chap. xl., on their cannibalism.—Ed.]