able to swallow a roebuck at one morsel, whence it has its name; and he
told me that one of these enormous serpents had been killed near the
town, a short time before our arrival. The principal products of Brazil
are red wood, bearing the name of the country; sugar, gold, tobacco,
snuff, whale oil, and various kinds of drugs; and the Portuguese build
their best ships in this country. Brazil has now become very populous,
and the people take great delight in arms, especially about the gold
mines, to which people of all kinds resort in great numbers, especially
negroes and mulattoes. Only four years ago [in 1704] these people
endeavoured to make themselves independent, but have now submitted. Some
men of repute told me that the gold mines increase fast in
productiveness, and that the gold is got much easier in them than in any
other country.

The indigenous Brazilian women are very fruitful, and have easy labours,
on which occasion they retire into the woods, and bring forth alone, and
return home after washing themselves and their child; the husbands lying
a-bed for the first twenty-four hours, being treated as if they had
endured the pains of child-birth. The _Tapoyers_, who inhabit the inland
country to the west, are the most barbarous of the natives, being taller
and stronger than any of the other tribes, and indeed than most
Europeans. They wear, by way of ornament, little sticks thrust through
their cheeks and underlips, and are said to be cannibals, using poisoned
arrows and darts. They live chiefly by hunting and fishing, shifting
their habitations according to the seasons. Their kings, or chiefs, are
distinguished by a particular manner of shaving their crowns, and by
wearing their nails very long. Their priests are sorcerers, making the
people believe that the devils appear to them in the form of certain
insects, and they perform their diabolical worship in the night, when
the women make dismal howlings, in which consists their principal
devotion. They allow polygamy, yet punish adultery with death. When the
young women are marriageable, but not courted, their mothers carry them
to the chiefs, who deflower them, and this is deemed a great honour.
Some of these people were considerably civilized by the Dutch, while
they possessed a part of Brazil, and did them good service under the
conduct of their native chiefs.

Leaving Isla Grande on the 30th November, we continued our voyage far to
the south, where we endur