"We were forced to go to the island of Sombrero (the Portuguese name for Chaura) some 10 or 12 leagues to the northward of Little Nicobar. Here we lost an anchor, for the ground is foul and groweth full of counterfeit coral and some rocks, which cut our cable asunder.
"The people of these islands go naked, having only the privities bound up in a piece of linen cloth, which cometh about their middles like a girdle and so between their twist. They are all of a tawny colour, and anoint their faces with divers colours: they are well limbed, but very fearful: for none of them would come aboard our ships, or enter our boats.
"The General reported that he had seen some of their priests all apparelled, but close to their bodies, as if they had been sewed in it; and upon their heads a pair of horns turning backwards (_tá-chökla_), with their faces painted green, black, and yellow, and their horns also painted the same colour. And behind them, upon their buttocks, a tail hanging down very much like in the manner as in some painted clothes we paint the devil in our country. He demanding wherefore they went in that attire, answer was made him, that in such form the devil appeared to them in their sacrifices, and therefore the priests, his servants, were so apparelled. In this island grow trees which for their tallness, greatness, and straightness will serve the biggest ships in all our fleet for a mainmast, and the island is full of these trees." This description of the island cannot be said to be applicable at the present day.
"Here likewise we found upon the sand by the seaside a small twig (_Virgularia mirabilis?_) growing up to a grand tree, and offering to pluck the same, it shrunk down into the ground, and sinketh unless you hold very hard. And being plucked up, a great worm is at the root of it: and look how the tree groweth in greatness the worm diminisheth. Now as soon as the worm is wholly turned into the tree it rooteth in the ground, and so groweth to be great. This transformation is one of the strangest wonders I saw in all my travels. For the tree being plucked up little, the leaves stripped off, and the pill by that time it was dry, turned into an hard stone, much like to white coral; so that the worm was twice transformed with different natures: of these we gathered and brought home many."[120]