Santo and tts Inhabitants. 121 
was well calculated to excite anyone’s imagination, and inclined 
one to look rather leniently even upon the exaggerated panegyrics 
of Quiros. The mountain ranges are magnificent ; some 
of them cannot be far short of 5000 feet high. This island 
possesses the beauties of the other islands, only upon a 
larger scale. It is exceedingly fertile, so much so that 
not a bare spot could be seen anywhere, the very precipices 
being covered with masses of thick green creepers, and every- 
where the trees and shrubs appeared packed so closely together 
as to make one wonder how they could find room to grow. 
No accurate estimate can be arrived at as to the population, 
but it is known to be thickly inhabited. The natives are su- 
perior in some respects to their southern neighbours, for they 
still have the art of making a rude kind. of pottery, which Quiros 
speaks of; their native weapons, too, are of a superior kind, 
and their chiefs have considerable power. Some of their spears 
are very curiously made, the shaft being of bamboo or some 
hardwood, and the points of human bone, neatly adjusted at the 
end. On the other islands, the natives make use of a man’s 
flesh as food; but here they use up his bones as well, for 
pointing their spears and arrows. Not because they con- 
sider that there is any peculiar virtue in a spear tipped with 
human bone, but merely because a man is the largest animal on 
the island, and so his bones are best suited for their pur- 
pose. 
A number of them—men, not bones—came off to the vessel, 
bringing spears, clubs, &c., to barter; and the canoes which 
they came in were certainly not what I would have called 
“ embarkations well wrought,” for they were in no way superior 
to those of the other islanders, and not quite fit, I imagine, to 
“navigate from one country to another,” unless the countries 
were remarkably close to each other. 
The natives who came off were fat friendly fellows, medium 
