55' N. and steering W. we
discovered, to our great joy, the island of Guam, eight leagues off,
having now only three-days provisions left.
Guam is one of the
Ladrones, in lat. 13 deg. 15' N. and long. 216 deg. 50' W. consequently its
meridional distance from Cape Corientes on the coast of Mexico is 111 deg.
14', or about 7730 English miles. It is twelve leagues long by four
broad, extending north and south, and is defended by a small fort
mounted by six guns, and a garrison of thirty men with a Spanish
governor, for the convenience of the Manilla ships, which touch here for
refreshments on their voyage from Acapulco to Manilla. The soil is
tolerably fertile, producing rice, pine-apples, water and musk melons,
oranges, limes, cocoa-nuts, and bread-fruit. This last grows on a tree
as big as our apple-trees, with dark green leaves. The fruit is round
and as large as a good penny-loaf,[191] growing on the boughs like
apples. When ripe it turns yellow, with a soft and sweet pulp; but the
natives pull it green, and bake it in an oven till the rind grows black.
They scrape off the rind, and the inside is soft and white, like the
crumb of new-baked bread, having neither seed nor stone; but it grows
harsh if kept twenty-four hours. As this fruit is in season for eight
months in the year, the natives use no other bread in all that time,
and they told us there was plenty of it in all the other Ladrone
islands.
[Footnote 191: This vague description may now safely be changed to the
size of a three-penny, or even four-penny loaf - E.]
On the 31st May we came to anchor near the middle of the west side of
this isle, a mile from shore, as there is no anchoring on its east side
on account of the trade-winds, which force the waves with great violence
against that side. The natives are of a copper-colour, strong-limbed,
with long black hair, small eyes, high noses, thick lips, white teeth,
and stern countenances, yet were very affable to us. They are very
ingenious in building a certain kind of boats, called proas, used all
over the East Indies. These are about twenty-six or twenty-eight feet
long, and five or six feet high from the keel, which is made of the
trunk of a tree like a canoe, sharp at both ends. They manage these
boats with a paddle instead of a rudder, and use a square sail, and they
sail with incredible swiftness, twenty or even twenty-four miles in an
hoar. One side of these boats is quite flat and upright like a wall from
end to end, but the other side is rounded and full-bellied like other
vessels. Along this side, parallel with the boat, at the distance of six
or seven feet, a log of light wood, a foot and a half wide, and sharp at
both ends, is fastened by means of two bamboos eight or ten feet long,
projecting from each end of the main boat, and this log prevents the
boat from oversetting.
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