three times the size of those of our breed.  They have remarkable skill in striking with these horns; lowering the beard to the breast, with the point of the horn they lift up the most minute object.  In spite of these formidable qualities both Indians and Spaniards hunt and slay them.  Their flesh, whether fresh or dried, is as good as the most excellent beef.  Deer are so abundant that the Japanese import cargoes of their hides from these islands.  The sea abounds in all kinds of delicate fish; trees, fruits, vegetables, and garden-stuff are abundant—­especially bananas, of which there are as many different kinds as in Europe there are varieties of apples and other fruits.  There are six or eight species of orange, the most famous of which is an orange as big as a large-sized melon or gourd.  Some of these are white inside, like limes; others are as red as our oranges are yellow; and all kinds are as well-flavored as bunches of delicate grapes.  In general, the fruits of those regions, although different from ours in species and form, have much the same flavor as the European fruits.  The palms, of which there are many and varied species, are the vineyards and olive-orchards of that country.  For beside the many other uses and advantages of this tree, it yields wine, vinegar, and oil in sufficient quantities not only to supply that region abundantly, but likewise to ship and send away to other neighboring regions—­especially furnishing wine to Japon, Maluco, and Nueva Espana.  The rigging of vessels is also manufactured from this tree.  In fact, there is such an abundance of the materials necessary for the construction of ships that a vessel which is built in Nueva Espana or Peru in several years’ time for fifty or sixty thousand pesos, is constructed in the Filipinas in less than one year, and at a cost of less than eight thousand pesos.  The cane is in itself another miracle, especially the kind called cauayan, the size and thickness of which are incredible.  I shall not say what I have seen of that species during fourteen years; but one of our Society lately told me in Lisboa, while discussing this subject, that in the river of London he had seen a vessel which had one of these canes for a pump.  In addition to Pliny, [45] the most ancient writer who makes much mention of these canes, there are many moderns who testify to their size—­especially one who, from information received by those of his nation who have coursed these seas (to our detriment and their own danger), has written an account of these canes and of other plants and fruits of that New World.  Although this cane is so large, it is so easily worked that it is employed in whatever is needed for any of the uses of life; from vessels and houses (which can be made from it in all their parts), its use extends to the pot and wood for cooking.  It seems to me that its uses could go no farther; and in these it corresponds, too, with what Pliny [46] writes of the reed and the papyrus—­particularly as