To the Shores of Chile by Mark Meuwese

Author:Mark Meuwese [Meuwese, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Modern, 17th Century, Americas, South America
ISBN: 9780271085364
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Published: 2019-08-08T04:00:00+00:00

Fig. 3 Map of the northern part of Chiloé Island, published in Journal and History with the caption “Being the great bay or the Chilean inland sea.” Photo: Nederlands Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam.

Potatoes are roots, which are often found in the earth; they are round or elongated, as big as a fist, but smaller and also larger. Cut up, they are of various colors such as red, white, and purple, as drawn by others; some are also very white. These roots are roasted in the fire and are used as a bread and are found to be nutritious.

According to the above-mentioned testimony, there are supposed to be rivers in Chile that during the day run and at night are without water, which would be fantastic for those who are unfamiliar to its causes, which are that when snow melts during the day because of the heat of the sun, it runs from the mountains; during the night because of the cold, it freezes and becomes hard again so that it [the water] no longer runs. I will leave this, however, to the discernment of the reader.

[63] The people or Indians here in the country are not the tallest, but they are strong, fat, and well built of life and limbs, not unlike the Brazilians.127 The body is brown of color, physically strong, with black hair, which they cut around their ears, having wrapped a bonnet or something else around their head. They pluck out completely their beards and moustaches.

Their clothing is very simple but in their manner very tidy. The men wear pants, just like the sailors, with a band tied around their waist, without a shirt or jerkin. From the same material they make pieces of cloth 3 and a half ell in length and 2 ell wide,128 of which they make a hole in the middle to put their head through and let the same hang on their shoulders. Further, they have bare arms and go barefoot without a hat, socks, and shoes. They use long spears as their weapons.

The women are smaller in size, dressed in the same cloth but in the following manner: they take a cloth, which they fix around their lower body as if it was an apron; then they fix a similar cloth around their neck, letting it fall on their back nearly to the ground, the head, breast, arms and legs bare. Some of them have long black hair locks, which have bound into them neatly woven woolen ribbons of different colors; others let the hair fall loose on their backs. Although they are not very well dressed for the cold of this country, they are healthy and strong, as was evident daily on the ships, where some of them bore children and within half an hour bound them on their backs, with which they walked across the ships. Some of them have breasts that are so large that they can throw them over their shoulders so that their children can suckle them.129 These

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