THE DISCOVERY OF GUIANA ad. 



1595. 

 valiant, and have the most manly speech and most 



deliberate that ever I heard, of what nation soever. In 

 the Summer they have houses on the ground, as in other 

 places : in the Winter they dwell upon the trees, where 

 they build very artificiall townes and villages, as it is 

 written in the Spanish story of the West Indies, that 

 those people do in the low lands nere the gulfe of 

 Uraba : for betweene May & September the river of 

 Orenoque riseth thirty foot upright, and then are those 

 ilands overflowen twenty foot high above the levell of 

 the ground, saving some few raised grounds in the middle 

 of them : and for this cause they are inforced to live 

 in this maner. They never eat of any thing that is 

 set or sowen : and as at home they use neither planting 

 nor other manurance, so when they come abroad, they 

 refuse to feed of ought, but of that which nature with- 

 out labour bringeth forth. They use the tops of Palmitos 

 for bread, and kill deere, fish, and porks, for the rest 

 of their sustenance. They have also many sorts of fruits 

 that grow in the woods, and great variety of birds 

 and fowle. 



And if to speake of them were not tedious, and 

 vulgar, surely we saw in those passages of very rare 

 colours and formes, not elsewhere to be found, for as 

 much as I have either seene or read. Of these people 

 those that dwell upon the branches of Orenoque, 

 called Capuri and Macureo, are for the most part 

 carpenters of canoas, for they make the most and 

 fairest canoas, and sel them into Guiana for golde, 

 and into Trinidad for tabacco, in the excessive taking 

 whereof, they exceed all nations ; and notwithstanding 

 the moistnesse of the aire in which they live, the 

 hardnesse of their diet, and the great labours they suffer 

 to hunt, fish and fowle for their living ; in all my life, 

 either in the Indies or in Europe, did I never behold 

 a more goodly or better favoured people or a more 

 manly. They were woont to make warre upon all 

 nations, and especially on the Canibals, so as none 



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