The Voyage of Franois Pyrard of Laval to the East Indies, the Maldives, the Moluccas and Brazil (2; V. 77)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 Excerpt: ...a man is paying his addresses to other women or girls, or is meaning to marry, or to quit them on any other ground whatever, infallibly they will poison him with a certain drug, which can keep him alive for six months, but at length will kill him,1 wherefore a man must use great cunning and dissimulation in quitting them. For the rest, the children of these unions are not held for bastards, but inherit both from the father and the mother, if neither the one nor the other is married. Fifteen days before we left Goa, a master's mate of one of the three carracks which left before us, named Manuel Fernando, went to visit the mistress of a soldier. The latter arriving at the same time gave him a swordcut in the neck, and leaving him for dead, took refuge in a church. But the woman and her maid-servant budged not, whereupon the magistrate coming up, in no wise punished the women nor him that had fled. The wounded man was carried to the hospital, and on his recovery seeing that his vessel, wherein all his goods were already shipped, had gone, he was constrained to come in ours. He bought a passage accordingly) without a word said. In short, those women are exceeding fond of the men of these parts. As for the soldiers who cohabit with them, they fail not to embark when called on, like the rest. The others who do not ordinarily live with such-like, women, club together nine or ten of them, more or less, and take a lodging: this is very cheap there, for a lodging that would cost twelve crowns a month here, would not fetch one there. They furnish it with beds, tables, and other utensils, 1 The drug on which this story is founded is not specified. Linschoten (i, 211) describes its potency as being still more marvellous: It will lye six yeres in a man's body, and ...