er of an ordinary brasier,
and are built wholly for use rather than for display. In that hollow
they put all their dishes, which consist of boiled rice, and fish
of the same stew, without there being any danger of the food being
spilled out. They use no tablecloths or napkins; and, although they use
dishes somewhat, they do not usually feel the lack of these, as the
trees with their wide leaves furnish them a cleaner table-service,
and the bamboos make them very tasteful jugs and bowls which are
formed from their lengths between knots. These also form their jars;
for there is a kind of bamboo from which they make jars containing
three or four azumbres. [63] By cutting four joint-lengths and boring
holes in them, they fill a good jar. The cocoanuts yield them cups,
for here these are very common.

CHAPTER XIV

The laws of their private conduct and the general laws of
their government

Following are the laws pertaining to them privately as persons. They
are as much adapted to the nature of the world (although more clothed
with innocence), as they are to their laziness and cupidity which
prohibits them from all expense which is not necessary for life,
as superfluous. For that I have always said of these natives that
they are fine philosophers, adapted to nature. The laws which touch
on other matters and have to do with their neighbors are quite at
variance with the laws of nature; and these extend to a tyranny
so manifestly cruel that at times and in some things it comes to
be brutality. I have seen a son who held his father as slave, and,
vice versa, a father who held his son as slave; for if one make an
outlay for another, they take account of it, as would be done in
the case of a stranger. Inasmuch as this son had freed his father
by buying him from his master, that man was reckoned as his son's
slave, and the same would be true of the son. It may happen that a
chief lowers himself [by having intercourse] with his slave-woman,
and the son whom she bears may be so cruel that at the death of his
father he makes his own mother his slave. Even if, while they are at
peace, these points are not cleared up, and the inner tyranny employs
external civility, yet, if dissensions alter these relations, and they
are divided, the men avail themselves of those rights, and subject
their mothers to whatever they choose, and do not allow them to leave
their houses. Thus do they come to be served by their mothers at al