_ 21 _ As we approached land, the captain threw bells onto the beach for them and they picked them up. They not only collected the ones that he had thrown but came to take them from his hand. This surprised us very much because when Bartolomeu Dias was here, the natives ran away from him and they did not take a single thing that he offered them. In fact, one day when he was taking on some excellent water from a watering hole on the sea-shore, they tried to prevent him by flinging stones from an overlooking hill, and Bartolomeu Dias fired a cross-bow and killed one of them. Our guess is that they did not run away from us because they had received news from the Bay of St. Helena, which we visited first (and from one country to the other it is only sixty leagues by sea) that we were men who did no harm, but rather gave of what we had. The captain-major decided not to go ashore, because the spot where the negroes were was covered in forest. He thus moved on to an open area where we anchored. We made signs to the negroes that they should make for the same place as we were going, which they did. Then the captain-major and the other captains landed with armed men, some with cross-bows. He then ordered
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