We Also Boiled Up And Refined
Eighty Gallons Of Oil Of Sea-Lions, Which We Used In Lamps To Save
Candles, And Might Have Prepared Several Tons, If We Had Been Provided
With Vessels.
The sailors sometimes used this oil to fry their fish, for
want of butter, and found it sufficiently agreeable.
The men who worked
ashore in repairing our rigging, eat the young seals, which they
preferred to our ship's provisions, alleging that it was as good as
English lamb. We made all the haste we could to get every thing on
board, as we learnt at the Canaries that five stout French privateers
were coming in company into the South Sea.
This island of Juan Fernandez is about fifteen English miles in length
from E. to W. and five miles where broadest, but averaging little more
than two miles in breadth, and is mostly composed of high rugged land. I
know of nothing in its neighbourhood which may endanger a ship, except
what is distinctly visible. We anchored in the great bay, [La Baia or
Cumberland harbour] on the N.E. side, about a mile from the bottom of
the bay, our best bower being dropt in forty fathoms, and the stream
anchor carried in with the shore, where it was laid in about thirty
fathoms. We here had plenty of several sorts of fish, as silver-fish,
snappers, bonitoes, cavallos, pollocks, old wives, and cray-fish of
great size. The wind blows here generally off the shore, sometimes in
heavy squalls, but for the most part calm, and where we were moored the
water was very smooth, owing to the winding of the shore. Mr Selkirk
told us it had never blown towards the land above four hours, all the
time he had been there. It is all hills and vallies, and would doubtless
produce most plants usual in such climates, if manured and cultivated,
as the soil promises well in most parts, and already grows turnips and
some other roots, which I suppose were formerly sowed. It has plenty of
wood and water, and abundance of wild goats.
There are such numbers of great sea-lions and other seals of various
sorts, all having excellent furs, in every bay, that we could hardly
walk about along shore for them, as they lay about in flocks like sheep,
their young ones bleating for their dams like so many lambs. Some of
these sea-lions are as big in the body as an English ox, and they roar
like lions. They are covered with short hair of a light colour, which is
still lighter on the young ones. I suppose they live partly on fish and
partly on grass, for they come on shore by means of their fore paws,
dragging their hind parts after them, and bask themselves in the sun in
great numbers. They cut near a foot deep of fat, and we killed a good
many of them for the sake of their oil, which is of good quality, but
they are difficult to kill.
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