aries, of which
says our Venetian, there are ten, seven cultivated and three still
desert; and of the seven inhabited four are Christian, three Heathen,
even now, fifty years after De Bethencourt's conquest. Neither wine nor
grain can be produced on this soil, and hardly any fruit, only a kind of
dye, used for clothes in Portugal; goat's flesh and cheese can also be
exported, and something, Cadamosto fancies, might be made of the wild
asses that swarm in the islands.

Each of these Canary islands being some forty miles from the next, the
people of one do not understand the speech of their neighbours. They
have no walls, but open villages; watch towers are placed on the highest
mountains to guard the people of one village from the attacks of the
next, for a guerilla warfare, half marauding, half serious civil war, is
the order of the day.

Speaking of the three heathen islands, "which were also the most
populous," Cadamosto stops a little over the mention of Teneriffe,
"wonderful among the islands of the earth, and able to be seen in clear
weather for a distance of seventy Spanish leagues, which is equal to two
hundred and fifty miles. And what makes it to be seen from so far, is
that on the top is a great rock of adamant, like a pyramid, which stone
blazes like the mountain of AEtna, and is full fifteen miles from the
plain, as the natives say."

These natives have no iron weapons, but fight with stones and wooden
daggers; they go naked except for a defensive armour of goat-skins,
which they wear in front and behind. Houses they have none, not even the
poorest huts, but live in mountain caves, without faith, without God.
Some indeed worship the sun and moon, and others planets, reverence
certain idols; in their marriage customs the chiefs have the first right
by common consent, and at the graves of their dead chiefs are most of
their religious sacrifices; the islanders have only one art, that of
stone-slinging, unless one were to count their mountain-climbing and
skill in running and in all bodily exercises, in which nature has
created these Canarians to excel all other mortals.

They paint their bodies with the juice of plants in all sorts of colours
and think this the highest point of perfection, to be decked out on
their skins like a garden bed.

From the Canaries, Cadamosto sails to the White Cape, C. Blanco, on the
mainland, some way beyond Bojador, "towards AEthiopia," passing the bay
and isles of Arguin on