Page:The principal navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation 16.djvu/336

 houses; for the people there are eaters of mans flesh. Here the Portugals burnt the ship wherein Francis Serrano was, for she was old and rotten. They went to a place on the other side standing in 8. degrees toward the south, where they laded cloues, nutmegs, and mace in a Iunco or barke which Francis Serrano bought here.

They say that not farre from the Islands of Banda there is an Island, where there breedeth nothing else but snakes, and the most are in one caue in the middest of the land. This is a thing not much to be woondered at; for as much as in the Leuant sea hard by the Isles of Maiorca and Minorca there is another Island of old named Ophiusa, and now Formentera, wherein there is great abundance of these vermine: and in the rest of the Islands lying by it there are none.

In the yeere 1512. they departed from Banda toward Malacca, and on the baxos or flats of Luçapinho Francis Serrano perished in his Iunke or barke, from whence escaped vnto the Isle of Mindanao nine or ten Portugals which were with him, and the kings of Maluco sent for them. These were the first Portugals that came to the Islands of Cloues, which stand from the Equinoctiall line towardes the north in one degree, where they liued seuen or eight yeeres.

The Island of Gumnape now called Ternate is much to be admired, for that it casteth out fire. There were some princes of the Moores and couragious Portugals which determined to go neere to the firie place to see what it was; but they could neuer come neere it. But Antonie Galuano hearing of it, vndertooke to goe vp to it, and did so, and found a riuer so extreme cold, that he could not suffer his hand in it, nor yet put any of the water in his mouth: and yet this place standeth vnder the line, where the sunne continually burneth.

In these Islands of Maluco there is a kinde of men that haue spurres on their ankles like vnto cocks. And it was told me by the king of Tydore, that in the Islands of Batochina there were people who had tailes, and had a thing like vnto a dug between their cods, out of the which there came milke. There are smal hennes also which lay their egges vnder the ground aboue a fathome and an halfe, and the egges are bigger then ducks egges, and many of these hennes are blacke in their flesh. There are hogs also with hornes, and parats which prattle much, which they call Noris. There is also a riuer of water so hot, that whatsoeuer