Page:The principal navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation 15.djvu/173

 with they liue foure or fiue dayes without meat or drinke, and this all the Frenchmen vsed for this purpose: yet do they holde opinion withall, that it causeth water and fleame to void from their stomacks.

The commodities of this land are more then are yet knowen to any man: for besides the land it selfe, whereof there is more then any Christian king is able to inhabit, it flourisheth with medow, pasture ground, with woods of Cedar and Cypres, and other sorts, as better can not be in the world. They haue for apothecary herbs, trees, roots and gummes great store, as Storax liquida, Turpintine, Gumme, Myrrhe, and Frankinsence, with many others, whereof I know not the names. Colours both red, blacke, yellow, and russet, very perfect, wherewith they so paint their bodies, and Deere skinnes which they weare about them, that with water it neither fadeth away, nor altereth colour. Golde and siluer they want not: for at the Frenchmens first comming thither they had the same offered them for little or nothing, for they receiued for a hatchet two pound weight of golde, because they knew not the estimation thereof: but the souldiers being greedy of the same, did take it from them, giuing them nothing for it: the which they perceiuing, that both the Frenchmen did greatly esteeme it, and also did rigourously deale with them, by taking the same away from them, at last would not be knowen they had any more, neither durst they weare the same for feare of being taken away: so that sauing at their first comming, they could get none of them: and how they came by this golde and siluer the French men know not as yet, but by gesse, who hauing trauelled to the Southwest of the cape, hauing found the same dangerous, by means of sundry banks, as we also haue found the same: and there finding masts which were wracks of Spaniards comming from Mexico, iudged that they had gotten treasure by them.

For it is most true that diuers wracks haue bene made of Spaniards, hauing much treasure: for the Frenchmen hauing trauelled to the capeward an hundred and fiftie miles, did finde two Spanyards with the Floridians, which they brought afterward to their fort, whereof one was in a carauel comming from the Indies, which was cast away foureteene yeeres ago, and the other twelue yeeres; of whose fellowes some escaped, othersome were slain by the inhabitants. It seemeth they had estimation of their golde and siluer, for it is wrought flat