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THE CAPTIVITY OF HANS STADE

there they would remain. Close by they had sunk pits in the ground round the settlements, in which they lay during the day, and out of which they came to skirmish with us. When we fired at them, they all fell down, thinking to duck from the shot. They had besieged us so thoroughly that we could neither move to nor fro; they came close to the settlement, they shot many arrows in the air,^[1] intending them to fall and hit us in the settlement; they also shot arrows at us whereon they had tied cotton and wax, and these they ignited, purposing to set fire to the roofs of the houses, and they threatened how they would eat us when they had got us.

We had still a little food, but it soon ran out. For it is in that country the custom to fetch fresh roots every day or every other day, and to make meal or cakes thereof; but we could not get at such roots.

Now when we saw that we had to suffer from want of victuals, we made with two barks for a settlement named

bulwarks of trees" instead of planting them, and he justly remarks that eight thousand men against ninety Europeans and thirty slaves, some of whom were negroes and others natives, is probably an exaggerated number, which Abreu e Lima (Compendio, p. 38) further exaggerates to "doze mil".

↑ These savages had two ways of shooting, one direct, the other called "atirar por elevação"; in the latter they lay on their backs, placed their feet against the bow and drew the string with both hands. The same is the practice with some tribes in Bhootan. For their art in "tirer leur flèches en haut", see Yves d'Evreux (p. 29); and Hans Stade, part 2, chapters 7 and 26, for their general skill and their fire arrows, which Garcilasso mentions in Peru (iii, 36). They could kill a fish jumping out of water, and were fatal shots at the distance of four hundred feet. The savages of the Brazil still shoot by elevation, and some are said to be so expert that they can choose a man out of a crowd, or make the arrow fall from the air within a few inches of their own toes. Old travellers navigating the Brazilian rivers defended themselves by awnings and curtains of hide. According to Nieuhoff, the bow was called guirapara or virapara, the string, usually of the tucum-palm or the pita-aloe, was guirapakuma, and the arrows of ubá cane (Alencar, O Guarany, i, 363) were termed Huí.

[1] These savages had two ways of shooting, one direct, the other called "atirar por elevação"; in the latter they lay on their backs, placed their feet against the bow and drew the string with both hands. The same is the practice with some tribes in Bhootan. For their art in "tirer leur flèches en haut", see Yves d'Evreux (p. 29); and Hans Stade, part 2, chapters 7 and 26, for their general skill and their fire arrows, which Garcilasso mentions in Peru (iii, 36). They could kill a fish jumping out of water, and were fatal shots at the distance of four hundred feet. The savages of the Brazil still shoot by elevation, and some are said to be so expert that they can choose a man out of a crowd, or make the arrow fall from the air within a few inches of their own toes. Old travellers navigating the Brazilian rivers defended themselves by awnings and curtains of hide. According to Nieuhoff, the bow was called guirapara or virapara, the string, usually of the tucum-palm or the pita-aloe, was guirapakuma, and the arrows of ubá cane (Alencar, O Guarany, i, 363) were termed Huí.

[1]