Page:The principal navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation 15.djvu/168

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sixe and twenty degrees to thirty degrees and a halfe, where the French men abode, ranging all the coast along, seeking for fresh water, ankering euery night, because we would ouershoot no place of fresh water, and in the day time the captaine in the ships pinnesse sailed along the shore, went into euery creeke, speaking with diuers of the Floridians, because hee would vnderstand where the French men inhabited; and not finding them in eight and twentie degrees, as it was declared vnto him, maruelled thereat, and neuer left sailing along the coast till he found them, who inhabited in a riuer, by them called the riuer of May, and standing in thirty degrees and better.

In ranging this coast along, the captaine found it to be all an Island, and therefore it is all lowe land, and very scant of fresh water, but the countrey was maruellously sweet, with both marish and medow ground, and goodly woods among.

There they found sorell to grow as abundantly as grasse, and where their houses were, great store of maiz and mill, and grapes of great bignesse, but of taste much like our English grapes. Also Deere great plentie, which came vpon the sands before them.

Their houses are not many together, for in one house an hundred of them do lodge; they being made much like a great barne, and in strength not inferior to ours, for they haue stanchions and rafters of whole trees, and are couered with palmito-leaues, hauing no place diuided, but one small roome for their king and queene. In the middest of this house is a hearth, where they make great fires all night, and they sleepe vpon certeine pieces of wood hewin in for the bowing of their backs, and another place made high for their heads, which they put one by another all along the walles on both sides. In their houses they remaine onely in the nights, and in the day they desire the fields, where they dresse their meat, and make prouision for victuals, which they prouide onely for a meale from hand to mouth.

There is one thing to be maruelled at, for the making of their fire, and not onely they but also the Negros doe the same, which is made onely by two stickes, rubbing them one against another: and this they may doe in any place they come, where they finde sticks sufficient for the purpose. In their apparell the men onely vse deere skinnes, wherewith some onely couer their priuy members, other some vse the same as garments