Page:The principal navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation 16.djvu/377

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crushed vpon sores and hurts healeth and cureth. The iuice of the tops and roots mingled with incense are good against poyson, and the biting of a viper. For these manifold benefits it is the most profitable tree knowne to growe in those parts.

Also there be there certaine small birds named Vicmalim, their bill is small and long. They liue of the dewe, and the iuice of flowers and roses. Their feathers be verie small and of diuers colours. They be greatly esteemed to worke golde with. They die or sleepe enerie yeere in the moneth of October sitting vpon a little bow in a warme and close place:

The reuiued birds. they reuiue or wake againe in the moneth of April after that the flowers be sprung, and therefore they call them the reuiued birds.

Likewise there be snakes in these parts, which sound as though they had bels when they creepe. There be other which engender at the mouth, euen as they report of the viper. There be hogges which haue a nauell on the ridge of their backs, which as soone as they be killed and cut out, will by and by corrupt and stinke.

Snorting fishes. Besides these there be certaine fishes which make a noyse like vnto hogs, and will snort, for which cause they be named snorters.

In the yeere 1538. and 1539. after that Diego de Almagro was beheaded, the Marques Francis Pisarro was not idle.[1]

Chili. For he sent straight one Peter de Baldiuia with a good companie of men to discouer and conquere the countrey of Chili. He was wel receiued of those of the countrey, but afterwards they rose against him and would haue killed him by treason. Yet for all the warre that he had with them, he discouered much land, and the coast of the sea toward the southeast, till he came into 40. degrees and more in latitude.

This might be the temple in the lake of Titicaca. While he was in these discoueries he heard newes of a king called Leucengolma, which commonly brought to the field two hundred thousand fighting men against another king his neighbour, and that this Leucengolma had an Island, and a temple therein with two thousand priestes: and that beyond them were the Amazones, whose Queene was called Guanomilla, that is to say, The golden heauen.[2] But as yet there are none of these things discouered.

  1. Gomara hist. gen. lib. 5. cap. 35.
  2. Cieça cap. 103.