Page:The Captivity of Hans Stade of Hesse.pdf/135
savages in Brazil, they were to be taken as prizes. Besides this he was also commanded by the king to conduct to that country certain prisoners who had deserved punishment; these being spared for the purpose of peopling the new countries.[1]
Our ship was well furnished with all such warlike contrivances as are used at sea. We were three Germans in her, one named Hans von Bruckhausen, the other Heinrich Brant of Bremen, and I.
Caput II.
Description of my first voyage from Lisbon out of Portugal.
We sailed from Lisbon with another small vessel, which also belonged to our captain, and first we arrived at an island called Eilga de Madera,[2] belonging to the king of Portugal; it is inhabited by Portuguese, and is fruitful of vines and sugar. There, at a city named Funtschal[3] we took into the ship more victuals.
Thereafter we sailed from the island towards Barbary, to a city named Cape de Gel,[4] belonging to a white Moor king,
- ↑ These "degradados" (convicts) were a "boa droga ou semente para fazer novas fundaçoens e colonias," remarks old Jaboatam. Yet we did the same in the United States and Australia, and other European nations follow our example to the present day.
- ↑ Ilha da Madeira, the island of wood, from the Latin "materia," so called because it was found covered with virgin forests. The same was the case with the Madeira affluent of the Amazons. "Materiam cædere" (Vitr.) means to fell timber, "materiarius" was a woodman or wood worker, and Cæsar describing Britain says: "Materia cujusque generis ut in Gallia est; præter fagum et abietem.
- ↑ Funchal, the field of fennel (funcho), a weed which overran the site upon which the city now stands.
- ↑ Arzilla, a small port about thirty miles from Tangiers, once in the possession of the Portuguese (Lempriere's Morocco, chapter 1). Schiririffe is for Sherif, a descendant of Mohammed the Apostle.