458 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION E, 



animals he saw in his first voyage {Letter a clelle isoJe, 

 p. 14) ; the natives are said to be naked and to deprive their 

 bodies of all hair except that on the head ; they carried bows 

 and arrows, clubs and spears, hardened in the fire (p. 5) ; 

 they had their meat in earthen basins or in the halves of 

 pumpkins (p. 6), which are represented in two places on the 

 Jave la Grande of the Harleyan Map ; their houses were 

 made like huts or cabins (caparme) of very large trees 

 covered with palm-leaves, and in some places of so great 

 length and breadth that in one single house dwelt six 

 hundred persons (p. 7). In the second voyage, Vespucci 

 observed on the island supposed to be Margarita, that the 

 inhabitants dwelt underneath arbours, which protected them 

 from the sun but not from the rain (p. 21) — a rude shelter 

 such as is depicted on the Harleyan Map, which also 

 represents the palm-trees. In his description of the country 

 and inhabitants of Verzin or Brazil, Pigafetta accords with 

 Vespucci in certain particulars. They have pigs which have 

 their navel on the back {Voyage of Magellan, Hakluyt Soc, 

 p. 46) ; the men wear no beard, because they pluck it out 

 (p. 45) ; their dwellings are long houses, in each of which 

 there dwells a hundred persons (p. 44). The Patagonians 

 who were encountered in Port S. Julian had low huts or 

 tents made of the skins of the guanaco and removed their 

 huts from place to place. These huts may be intended by 

 the conical structures of Besceliers. The object most 

 characteristic of South America is the guanaco, for such 

 seems to be intended by the camel-hke animal that appears 

 on some of these maps. As drawn by Desceliers in 1550 

 it is very much of a monster, and might well have been 

 conceived after the description of Pigafetta : — " This beast 

 has the head and ears of the size of a mule, and the neck 

 and body of the fashion of a camel, the legs of a deer and the 

 tail like that of a horse, and it neighs like a horse." {Voyage 

 of Magellan, p. 50.) And further on Piggafetta relates 

 that the natives tamed this animal and led it with a cord, as 

 we find represented by Desceliers. The juxtaposition of 

 these South American subjects with the outlines of South 

 America may be fortuitous. Jave la Grande offered ample 

 scope for the purpose of illustrations, and may have been 

 merely selected as a convenient blank space in which to 

 place them, their appropriate position being more or less 

 conjectural. At the same time our suggestion about Piga- 



