d when they had the response from us, they came quickly, and having
stood awhile to look, hearing the noisy clamor of the sailor crowd,
sent the Queen with her damsels in a very light barge to stay on a
little island distant from us a quarter of a league; himself remaining
a very long time, discoursing by signs and gestures of various
fanciful ideas, examining all the equipments of the ship, asking
especially their purpose, imitating our manners, tasting our foods,
then parted from us benignantly. And one time, our people remaining
two or three days on a little island near the ship for various
necessities as is the custom of sailors, he came with seven or eight
of his attendants, watching our operations, asking many times if we
wished to remain there for a long time, offering us his every help.
Then, shooting with the bow, running, he performed with his attendants
various games to give us pleasure.

Many times we were from five to six leagues inland, which we found as
pleasing as it can be to narrate, adapted to every kind of
cultivation--grain, wine, oil. Because in that place the fields are
from XXV to XXX leagues wide, open and devoid of every impediment of
trees, of such fertility that any seed in them would produce the best
crops. Entering then into the woods, all of which are penetrable by
any numerous army in any way whatsoever, and whose trees, oaks,
cypresses, and others are unknown in our Europe. We found Lucallian
apples, plums, and filberts, and many kinds of fruits different from
ours. Animals there are in very great number, stags, deer, lynx, and
other species, which, in the way of the others, they capture with
snares and bows, which are their principal arms. The arrows of whom
are worked with great beauty, placing at the end, instead of iron,
emery, jasper, hard marble, and other sharp stones, by which they
served themselves instead of iron in cutting trees, making their
barges from a single trunk of a tree, hollowed with wonderful skill,
in which from fourteen to XV men will go comfortably; the short oar,
broad at the end, working it solely with the strength of the arms at
sea without any peril, with as much speed as pleases them.

Going further, we saw their habitations, circular in form, of XIIII to
XV paces compass, made from semi-circles of wood [_i.e._, arched
saplings, bent in the form of an arbor], separated one from the other,
without system of architecture, covered with mats of straw ingeniousl