person can help
himself to eat and drink, and recovers sufficiently to be
able to return to the village, his people receive him again
with great ceremony; but few are they who escape this mode
of treatment, as most of them die without being visited, and
that is their only burial.

"They use in their diseases various kinds of medicines, so
different from any in vogue with us that we are astonished
that any escaped. I often saw, for instance, that when a
person was sick with a fever, which was increasing upon him,
they bathed him from head to foot with cold water, and
making a great fire around him, they made him turn round in
a circle for about an hour or two, until they fatigued him
and left him to sleep. Many were cured in this way. They
also observe a strict diet, eating nothing for three or four
days. They practise blood-letting; not on the arm, unless in
the arm-pit, but generally taking it from the thighs and
haunches. Their blood or phlegm is much disordered on
account of their food, which consists mainly of the roots of
herbs, of fruit, and fish. They have no wheat or other
grain, but instead make use of the root of a tree [shrub]
from which they manufacture flour, which is very good and
called _huca_ [yucca]; the flour from another root is called
_kazabi_, and from another _igname_.

"They eat little meat except human flesh, and you will
notice that in this particular they are more savage than
beasts, because all their enemies who are killed or taken
prisoners, whether male or female, are devoured with so much
fierceness that it seems disgusting to relate, much more to
see it done, as I, with my own eyes, have many times
witnessed this proof of their inhumanity. Indeed, they
marvelled much to hear us say that we did not eat our
enemies.

"And your Excellency may rest assured that their other
barbarous customs are so numerous that it is impossible
herein to describe them all. As in these voyages I have
witnessed so many things at variance with our own customs, I
prepared myself to write a collection, which I call _The
Four Voyages_, in which I have related the major part of the
things I saw as clearly as my feeble capacity would permit.
This work is not yet published, though many advise me to
publish it.