here they stayed fifteen days, most courteously received by
the inhabitants. Among others appeared two chiefs, gorgeously arrayed in
painted deer-skins,--kings, as Verrazzano calls them, with attendant
gentlemen; while a party of squaws in a canoe, kept by their jealous
lords at a safe distance from the caravel, figure in the narrative as
the queen and her maids. The Indian wardrobe had been taxed to its
utmost to do the strangers honor,--copper bracelets, lynx-skins,
raccoon-skins, and faces bedaubed with gaudy colors.
Again they spread their sails, and on the fifth of May bade farewell to
the primitive hospitalities of Newport, steered along the rugged coasts
of New England, and surveyed, ill pleased, the surf-beaten rocks, the
pine-tree and the fir, the shadows and the gloom of mighty forests. Here
man and nature alike were savage and repellent. Perhaps some plundering
straggler from the fishing-banks, some manstealer like the Portuguese
Cortereal, or some kidnapper of children and ravisher of squaws like
themselves, had warned the denizens of the woods to beware of the
worshippers of Christ. Their only intercourse was in the way of trade.
From the brink of the rocks which overhung the sea the Indians would let
down a cord to the boat below, demand fish-hooks, knives, and steel, in
barter for their furs, and, their bargain made, salute the voyagers with
unseemly gestures of derision and scorn.
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