landing, yet many ships lade here every year. Here are plenty of bulls, cows, and goats; and at a certain season in the year, as May, June, July, and August, a sort of small sea tortoise come hither to lay their eggs: but these turtle are not so sweet as those in the West Indies. The inhabitants plant corn, yams, potatoes, and some plantains, and breed a few fowls; living very poor, yet much better than the inhabitants of any other of these islands, Santiago excepted, which lies four or five leagues to the westward of Mayo, and is the chief, the most fruitful, and best inhabited of all the Islands of Cape Verd; yet mountainous, and much barren land in it.

On the east side of the Isle of Santiago is a good port, which in peaceable times especially is seldom without ships; for this hath long been a place which ships have been wont to touch at for water and refreshments, as those outward bound to the East Indies, English, French, and Dutch; many of the ships bound to the coast of Guinea, and Dutch to Surinam, and their own Portuguese Fleet going for Brazil, which is generally about the latter end of September: but few ships call in here in their return for Europe. When any ships are here the country people bring down their commodities to sell to the seamen and passengers, viz., bullocks, hogs, goats, fowls, eggs, plantains, and cocoa-nuts; which they will give in exchange for shirts, drawers, handkerchiefs, hats, waistcoats, breeches, or in a manner for any sort of cloth, especially linen; for woollen is not much esteemed there. They care not willingly to part with their cattel1 of any sort but in exchange for money, or linen, or some other valuable commodity. Travellers must have a care of these people, for they are very thievish, and, if they see an opportunity, will snatch anything from you and run away with it. We did not touch at this island in this voyage; but I was there before this in the year

1 Goods, chattels.

1670, when I saw a fort here lying on the top of an hill, and commanding the harbour. The Governor of this island is chief over all the rest of the islands. I have been told that there are two large towns on this island, some small villages, and a great many inhabitants; and that they make a great deal of wine, such as is that of San Nicolas. I have not been on any other of the Cape Verd Islands, nor near them, but have seen most of them at a distance. They seem to be mountainous and barren, some of these before mentioned being the most fruitful and most frequented by strangers, especially Santiago and Mayo. As to the rest of them, Fogo and Brava are two small islands lying to the westward of Santiago, but of little note; only Fogo is remarkable for its being a volcano. It is all of it one large mountain of a good height, out of the top whereof issue flames of fire, yet only discerned in the night; and then it may be seen a great way at sea. Yet this island is not without inhabitants, who live at the foot of the mountain near the sea. Their subsistence is much the same as in the other islands; they have some goats, fowls, plantains, cocoa-nuts, &c., as I am informed. The remainder of these islands of Cape Verd are San Antonia, Santa Lucia, San Vincente, and Bona Vista: of which I know nothing considerable.

Our entrance among these islands was from the NE.; for in our passage from Virginia we ran pretty far toward the coast of Gualata in Africa, to preserve the trade-wind, lest we should be borne off too much to the westward, and so lose the islands. We anchored at the south of Sal, and passing by the south of San Nicolas anchored again at Mayo, as hath been said; where we made the shorter stay, because we could get no flesh among the inhabitants, by reason of

2 Apparently the coast north of Cape Blanco, under the Tropic of Cancer; two Arab tribes with the designation of Aoulâd or Walad inhabit the interior.

1683-4.]

the regret they had at their Governor and his men being carried away by Captain Bond. So leaving the Isles of Cape Verd we stood away to the southward with the wind at ENE., intending to have touched no more till we came to the Straits of Magellan. But when we came into the Lat. of 10° N., we met the winds at S. by W. and SSW., therefore we altered our resolutions, and steered away for the coast of Guinea, and in few days came to the mouth of the River of Sherboro', which is an English factory lying south of Sierra Leone. We had one of our men who was well acquainted there; and by his direction we went in among the shoals, and came to an anchor. Sherboro' was a good way from us, so I can give no account of the place, or our factory there; save that I have been informed, that there is a considerable trade driven there for a sort of red wood for dyeing, which grows in that country very plentifully; it is called by our people Camwood. A little within the shore where we anchored was a town of Negroes, natives of this coast. It was screened from our sight by a large grove of trees that grew between them and the shore; but we went thither to them several times during the three or four days of our stay here, to refresh ourselves; and they as often came aboard us, bringing with them plantains, sugar-canes, palm-wines, rice, fowls, and honey, which they sold us. They were no way shy of us, being well acquainted with the English, by reason of our Guinea factories and trade. This town seemed pretty large; the houses but low and ordinary; but one great house in the midst of it, where their chief men meet and receive strangers: and here they treated us with palmwine. As to their persons they are like other Negroes. While we lay here we scrubbed the bottom of our ship, and then filled all our watercasks; and buying up two puncheons of rice for our voyage, we departed from hence about the middle of November 1683, prosecuting our intended course towards the Straits of Magellan.

155

We had but little wind after we got out, and very hot weather, with some fierce tornadoes, commonly rising out of the NE., which brought thunder, lightning, and rain. These did not last long; sometimes not a quarter of an hour; and then the wind would shuffle about to the southward again, and fall flat calm; for these tornadoes commonly come against the wind that is then blowing, as our thunder-clouds are often observed to do in England. At this time many of our men were taken with fevers: yet we lost but one. While we lay in the calms we caught several great sharks; sometimes two or three in a day, and ate them all, boiling and squeezing them dry, and then stewing them with vinegar, pepper, &c., for we had but little flesh aboard. We took the benefit of every tornado, which came sometimes three or four in a day, and carried what sail we could to get to the southward, for we had but little wind when they were over; and those small winds between the tornadoes were much against us till we passed the Equinoctial Line. In the Lat. of 5° S. we had the wind at ESE., where it stood a considerable time, and blew a fresh topgallant gale. We then made the best use of it, steering on briskly with all the sail we could make; and this wind by the 18th of January carried us into the Lat. of 36° S. In all this time we met with nothing worthy remark; not so much as a fish, except flying fish, which have been so often described, that I think it needless for me to do it. Here we found the sea much changed from its natural greenness, to a white or palish colour, which caused us to sound, supposing we might strike ground; for whenever we find the colour of the sea to change, we know we are not far from land, or shoals which stretch out into the sea, running from some land. But here we found no ground with 100 fathom line. The 20th, one of our Surgeons died, much lamented, because we had but one more for such a dangerous voyage.

January 28th, we made the Sibbel

low.

These contrivances are used particularly by the savage Indians of Blewfields River, whose canoes and stone hatchets I have seen. These stone hatchets are about ten inches long, four broad, and three inches thick in the middle. They are ground away flat and sharp at both ends; right in the midst, and clear round it, they make a notch, so wide and deep that a man might place his finger along it; and taking a stick or withe about four feet long, they bind it round the hatchet-head in that notch, and so twisting it hard, use it as a handle or helve, the head being held by it very fast. Nor are other wild Indians less ingenious. Those of Patagonia, particularly, head their arrows with flint cut or ground, which I have seen and admired. *

But to return to our Mosquito man on the Isle of Juan Fernandez. With such instruments as he made in that manner, he got such provision as the island afforded, either goats or fish. He told us that at first he was forced to eat seal, which is very ordinary meat, before he had made hooks; but afterwards he never killed any seals but to make lines, cutting their skins into thongs. He had a little house or hut half-a-mile from the sea, which was lined with goatskin; his couch, or barbecue, of sticks, lying along about two feet distant from the ground, was spread with the same, and was all his bedding. He had no clothes left, having worn out those he brought from Watling's ship, but only a skin about his waist. He saw our ship the day before we came to an anchor, and did believe we were English, and therefore killed three goats in the morning before we came to anchor, and dressed them with cabhage to treat us when we came ashore. He came then to the sea-side to congratulate our safe arrival. And when we landed, a Mosquito Indian, named Robin, first leaped ashore, and running to his brother Mosquito-man,

1 From Anglo-Saxon "helf," a

haft or handle.

Marvelled at.

threw himself flat on his face at his feet, who, helping him up and embracing him, fell flat with his face on the ground at Robin's feet, and was by him taken up also. We stood with pleasure to behold the surprise and tenderness and solemnity of this interview, which was exceedingly affectionate on both sides; and when their ceremonies of civility were over, we also that stood gazing at them drew near, each of us embracing him we had found here, who was overjoyed to see so many of his old friends come hither, as he thought, purposely to fetch him. He was named Will, as the other was named Robin. These were names given them by the English, for they have no names among themselves; and they take it as a great favour to be named by any of us, and will complain for want of it if we do not appoint them some name when they are with us, saying, of themselves they are poor men and have no name.

This island is in Lat. 34° 15', and about 120 leagues from the main. It is about twelve leagues round, full of high hills and small pleasant valleys, which, if manured, would probably produce anything proper for the climate. The sides of the mountains are part savannahs, part woodland. Savannahs are clear pieces of land without woods, not because more barren than the woodland, for they are frequently spots of as good land as any, and often are intermixed with woodland. [The grass in these savannahs is here described as long and flaggy, and the valleys well stocked with wild goats, these having been first left there by Juan Fernandez in his voyage from Lima to Valdivia. The sea about it is described as swarming with fish, "so plentiful that two men in an hour's time will take with hook and line as many as will serve 100 men."]

Seals swarm as thick about this island as if they had no other place to live in, for there is not a bay nor rock that one can get ashore on but is full of them. The seals are a sort of creatures pretty well