A Momentous Journey

28 vegetable plots, and there are also many sheep with round bottoms, cows and all other livestock, many oranges and chickens. The king and people of this village are and always have been friends of the King of Portugal, and the Portuguese have always found them to be most obliging and friendly and peaceful, and their ships, should they happen to pass by there, take on many fresh supplies. The Island of Saint Lawrence Lying diagionally across the sea from all these places is a very large island called Saint Lawrence, which has a gentile population inland and Mouros living in the seaports, where they have many villages. This island has many Mouros and gentile kings; there is a lot of meat; rice; oranges and lemons, and also plenty of ginger, which they use for nothing other than food. The men go naked, merely covering their pudenda with cotton cloths; they do not sail anywhere, nor does anyone sail to them, they have many canoes that they use to fish from along the coast; they are brown-skinned and have their own language. They are often at war with each other, they use very fine throwing spears as weapons, with finely sculpted tips, each of them carrying a number of them in one hand which they throw to wound with; they are very fast and skillful throwers; they use low grade silver; their staple diet is yams; the land is beautiful, pleasant and verdant, with streams and quite large rivers. This island must be three hundred leagues long along the coast of Malindi and around seventy leagues from the mainland. Pemba, Mafia and Zanzibar There are three islands between this island of Saint Lawrence and the main island; one is called Mafia, another Pemba and another Zanzibar, populated by Mouros; they are fertile, and have plenty of rice; millet and meats, and oranges; lemons, and citrons, the woods are full

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