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Updated: May 11, 2025
Twenty or thirty targets, as many claymores, with dirks, and plaids, and guns, both match-lock and fire-lock, and long-bows, and cross-bows, and Lochaber axes, and coats of plate armour, and steel bonnets, and headpieces, and the more ancient haborgeons, or shirts of reticulated mail, with hood and sleeves corresponding to it, all hung in confusion about the walls, and would have formed a month's amusement to a member of a modern antiquarian society.
The one is cedar, which has a strong odoriferous smell, and resembles the cypress tree; of this they make fine, large, and long boards or deals, which they employ for building houses, and for various other purposes. The other, called nasso , is of a red-rose colour, and extremely beautiful; of which they make excellent and very beautiful bows and cross-bows, which are sent into the west.
At the edge of the lake lay charming gondolas ready for those who wished to rest and refresh themselves by a sail upon the dancing waves. For the hunters and huntresses targets were placed upon the trees; all kinds of fire-arms and cross-bows and arrows lay near them.
The word here used in the Latin, balistais, is probably corrupted in transcription for balistariis; and may either mean cross-bow-men, or men for working balistae, the ancient artillery, if the expression be allowable. Arcubalistarii is the appropriate middle age Latin for men armed with cross-bows.
And though at night he entered no torch or lamp he hath, For glorious Celinda is the sun upon his path; And as he enters in the town at once the word is given: "Now let your shots, your cross-bows, sound to the vault of heaven!
The assailants then moved forward and, unslinging their bows, opened a heavy fire of arrows at the defenders, who, in turn, replied with arrows and cross-bows. "The 'prentices shoot well," the king said; "by our lady, it would be hot work for the defenders were the shafts but pointed!
Some were armed with cross-bows, but they had thrown them aside for the purpose of doing more service with their sharp blades. Never had I heard so fearful a din, for the object of the pirates seemed to be to overwhelm us, and frighten us out of our wits by their numbers. Two or three of our men lay wounded, dying on the deck. It seemed, indeed, that the pirates were gaining the advantage.
Ten brace of gallant greyhounds, each of which was fit to pluck down, singly, the tallest red deer, were led in leashes, by as many of Lord Boteler's foresters. The pages, squires, and other attendants of feudal splendour well attired, in their best hunting-gear, upon horseback or foot, according to their rank, with their boar- spears, long bows, and cross-bows, were in seemly waiting.
Some Indians brought a message from the cacique, saying that he would come next day on purpose to trade: But this was merely a feint to gain time, that they might collect their power; as at eleven o'clock, eighty canoes full of armed men attacked the nearest ship, and fought till night without doing the Spaniards any harm, all their arrows falling short, as they durst not come near, for fear of the cross-bows and artillery.
When the Indians saw several of their comrades fall dead, they took to flight, rarely waiting for the attack with swords: some of the wounded, in whose bodies the arrows from the cross-bows had penetrated to the very feather, drew them out with their hands, broke them with their teeth, and hurling them at the Spaniards with impotent fury, fell dead upon the spot.
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