ABSTRACT
While we were busy working on the ships, our Antonio brought a Cafre to us, named Domingos, one of two from the carrack Sao Joao who had remained there to live with the others, and, being a person with good qualities, he was so pleased with our way of life, as one who had been first reared in it, that he was unwilling to be parted from us ever again and was very useful to us in accompanying our people who went into the interior of the land, since he was thoroughly acquainted with it. Very unfortunately, however, after being with us for a long time, he drowned in the river while trying to swim across it and never reappeared. After this the other one came, named Joao, whose propensities nature tried to indicate to us by giving him one squinting eye as an outward sign of his treacherous nature, for he soon left us. And after we had departed in the first pinnace, with no further knowledge of him, it fell out that he died at the hands of our people, whom he was attempting to betray; for he came, after our departure, to join the people of the second pinnace, 1 of which I shall speak later, who, from II8 in 34leagues' journey, had all died at the hands of the Cafres and from hunger except for 17 who managed to get back to this same place, where, trying to recuperate from the fatigue of the journey in order to continue, they were not helped by the arrival of this Cafre, who came as a spy with his father; and after two days the father left him with our people for better security, and since our people suspected what it might be, they killed him one night by striking his head with a stone and crushing it, whereby they caused him to continue the sleep he was enjoying, but making it the eternal sleep of death. What happened afterward showed that their decision was justified, for the father came the next day with many Cafres to attack our people, but, not receiving the spy's countersign, they turned back without putting their plan into effect. This was the fate of these two Cafres. Antonio's
was better, if one can consider being doomed to eternal damnation as a better fate, for he never agreed to come with us no matter how many times we begged him, giving as a reason the fact that he had a wife, children and grandchildren, some of whom he brought to us there, and since he was married to two women, in the manner of the heathen of the land, his sins held him captive, rendering him unworthy of being reformed and returned to the land of Christians through the grace of God.
