Sierra Leona Is A Mountain On The Continent Of Africa, Standing On The South Side Of The Mouth Of The River Mitomba, Which Discharges Itself Into A Great Bay Of The Sea.

The road in which ships usually anchor is in the lat.

Of 8 deg. 20' N. This mountain is very high, and thickly covered with trees, by which it may be easily known, as there is no mountain of such height any where upon the coast. There grow here a prodigious number of trees, producing a small kind of lemons called limasses, (limes?) resembling those of Spain in shape and taste, and which are very agreeable and wholesome, if not eaten to excess. The Dutch fleet arrived here at the season when this fruit was in perfection, and having full leave from the natives, the people eat them intemperately; by which, and the bad air, the bloody flux increased much among them, so that they lost forty men between the 11th of August and the 5th September. Sierra Leona abounds in palm-trees, and has some ananas, or pine-apples, with plenty of wood of all sorts, besides having an exceedingly convenient watering-place opposite to the anchorage.

They sailed from Sierra Leona on the 4th September, on which day the admiral fell sick. On the 29th they were off the island of St Thomas, just on the north side of the line, and anchored on the 1st of October at Cape Lopo Gonzalves, in lat. 0 deg. 50' S. At this place the surgeon of the Maurice was convicted on his own confession of having poisoned seven sick men, because they had given him much trouble, for which he was beheaded. On the 30th of October they anchored in the road of Annobon, where they obtained hogs and fowls, and were allowed to take in water, and to gather as many oranges as they thought proper. The east end of this island, where are the road and village, is in lat. 1 deg. 30' S. and long. 6 deg. E. from Greenwich. The island is about six leagues in circuit, consisting of high and tolerably good land, and is inhabited by about 150 families of negroes, who are governed by two or three Portuguese, to whom they are very submissive. If any of them happen to be refractory, they are immediately sent away to the island of St Thomas, a punishment which they greatly dread. The island abounds in ananas, bananas, cocoa-nuts, tamarinds, and sugar-canes; but the principal inducement for ships touching here is the great plenty of oranges, of which the Dutch gathered upwards of 200,000, besides what the seamen eat while on shore. These oranges were of great size and full of juice, some weighing three quarters of a pound, and of an excellent taste and flavour, as if perfumed. They are to be had ripe all the year round, but there is one season in which they are best and fittest for keeping, which was past before the Dutch arrived, and the oranges were then mostly over ripe and beginning to rot.

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