They encountered a heavy storm on the 14th of March, by which the
vice-admiral and the Hope were separated from the admiral, but they met
again on the 17th. The scurvy now began to make rapid progress among the
company; which, together with the approach of the antarctic winter,
determined them to put in at St Helena. Missing that island, they next
endeavoured to fall in with the island of Ascension, or some other
island where they might procure refreshments; but their hard fortune
brought them to a very barren and desolate island in the lat. of 20 deg. 30'
S.[70] where they could procure no refreshments, except a few fowls
called Malle Mewen,[71] which they knocked down with clubs.
[Footnote 70: The island of Trinidad is nearly in the indicated
latitude. - E.]
[Footnote 71: These were probably young unfledged sea-gulls, called in
provincial English Malls, Maws, and Mews, not unlike the Dutch names
in the text; where perhaps we ought to read Malle or Mewen. - E.]
Soon leaving this inhospitable place, they put to sea again, and on the
1st of June, while endeavouring to reach Ascension, they got back to the
coast of Brazil. Not being suffered to land any where on the continent,
they sailed to the isle of Santa Clara, an island of about a mile round,
and as much from the continent, in lat.
