it they
were much amazed, and looked at one another, and again looked at the
mirror, and laughed loudly and made jokes, and spoke to the others who
were in the canoe.

They went away with the looking-glass, highly delighted, and left six
birds and much of the fruit, and all went away; and in the afternoon they
came again, but bringing a quantity of those birds, at which our men
rejoiced very much, and filled hencoops with them, because they gave them
and were satisfied with anything that was given them, especially white
stuffs; so that the seamen cut their shirts in pieces, with which they
bought so many of these birds that they killed and dried them in the sun,
and they kept very well. Here it was observed that in this river there
were no flies, for they never saw any all the time they were there, which
was twenty days; and they went away because the crew began to fall ill.
It seems that it was from that fruit, which was very delicious to eat;
and the principal ailment was that their gums swelled and rotted, so that
their teeth fell out, and there was such a foul smell from the mouth that
no one could endure it. The captain-major provided a remedy for this, for
he ordered that each one should wash his mouth with his own water each
time he passed it, by doing which in a few days they obtained health.

The captain-major made a hole with pickaxes in a stone slab at the
entrance of this river, and set up a marble pillar, of which he had
brought many for that purpose, which had two escutcheons, one of the arms
of Portugal, and another, on the other side, of the sphere, and letters
engraved in the stone which said, "Of the Lordship of Portugal, Kingdom
of Christians." The captain-major, seeing how much the seamen and masters
and pilots worked, especially his own, notwithstanding the imprisonment
which he had inflicted upon them, when he was about to quit this River
of Mercy, made them all come to his ship, where he addressed them all,
beseeching them not to suffer weakness to enter their hearts, which would
induce them to wish to commit another such error by harboring thoughts of
treason, which is so hideous before God, and always brings a bad end to
those who engage in it; he said that he well saw that faint-heartedness
was the cause of what had passed, and that he forgave all. And that since
the Lord had been pleased to deliver them from so many dangers as they
had passed up to that time, by his great mercy, therefore the