A servant of the Admiral, called Bernaldo de Ibarro, who was on this voyage with him, told me and gave it to me in writing and I have this writing in my possession to-day, that a cacique came to the ship of the Admiral and was wearing upon his head a diadem of gold; and he went to the Admiral who was wearing a scarlet cap and greeted him and kissed his own diadem, and with the other hand he removed the cap of the Admiral and placed upon-him the diadem, and he himself put upon his own head the scarlet cap, appearing very content and pleased.
The Admiral says here that these were all youths and very well shaped and adorned, although I do not believe they wore much silk or brocade, with which, also, I believe the Spaniards and the Admiral might be more pleased; but they came armed with bows and arrows and wooden shields. They were not as short as others he had seen in the Indies and they were whiter, and of very good movements and handsome bodies, the hair long and smooth and cut in the manner of Castile. They had the head tied with a large handkerchief of cotton, symmetrically woven in colors, which the Admiral believed to be the _almaiçar_;[336-1] he says that others had this cloth around them, and they covered themselves with it in place of trousers. He says that they are not black although they are near the equinoctial,[337-1] but of an Indian color like all the others he has found. They are of very fine stature, go naked, are warlike, wear the hair very long like the women in Castile, carry bows and arrows with plumes, and at the end of the arrows a sharp bone with a point like a fish-hook, and they carry wooden shields, which he had not seen before; and according to the signs and gestures which they made, he says he could understand from them that they believed the Admiral came from the south, from which he judged that there must be great lands toward the south, and he said well since the mainland is so large that it occupies a large part of the south.
The temperature of this land, he says, is very high, and according to him this causes the color of the people, and the hair which is all flowing, and the very thick groves which abound everywhere. He says it must be believed that when once the boundary is passed, 100 leagues to the west of the Azores, that many times he has said that there is a change in the sky and the sea and the temperature, "and this," he says, "is manifest," because here where he was, so near to the equinoctial line, each morning, he says, it was cool and the sun was in Leo. What he says is very true, since I who write this have been there and required a robe nights and mornings especially at Navidad.[337-2]