Page:The Captivity of Hans Stade of Hesse.pdf/186

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IN EASTERN BRAZIL.
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French, that they were to let me remain unkilled, until such time as the Frenchmen came and recognized me. And they kept me in very careful confinement, as there were several Frenchmen among them who had been left by the ships to collect pepper.


Caput XXVI.

How one of the Frenchmen who had been left by the ships among the savages came thither to see me, and advised them to eat me, as I was a Portuguese.

There was a Frenchman living four miles distant from the huts where I was. Now when he heard the news he proceeded thither, and went into another hut opposite to that wherein I was. Then the savages came running towards me,[1] and said, "Now a Frenchman has arrived here, we shall soon see if you also are a Frenchman or not." I felt glad of this, and I thought, at all events he is a Christian, and he will say everything for the best.

Then they took me in to him naked as I was, and I saw that he was a young fellow, the savages called him Karwattu ware.[2] He addressed me in French, and I of course

  1. As we learn from Yves d'Evreux it was the custom for Europeans to travel with a guide-guard, whom they called Moussacat or Compère. Such is the Ghafir of Arabia and the Abbán of the Somali country, to mention no more.
  2. In chapter xxv, Karwattuware. European names being often unpronounceable to the Tupis, they gave nicknames to every one: in Yves d'Evreux for instance, we find a dragoman called Mingan or porridge. This word is probably Caranáta-g-uâra, eater of the wild Bromelia Caraguatá, in Southey (i, 175) Craûta, in Niehoff (loc. cit., 873), Karageata and vulgarly Gravatá; there is a place of this name in the Bay of Rio de Janeiro. Vasconcellos notices a number of uses to which it is put: one of these is that the hollow leaves collect rain-water to relieve the traveller's thirst. The fruit is of an extreme acidity; it destroyed the teeth of the unfortunate explorers of the Panama Isthmus, led by Lieut. Strain, U.S. Navy, as I was told by one of the survivors, Dr. Reinhardt, of Campinas, S. Paulo.