Every Thing Taken In The Conception, Was
Divided According To The Articles Settled At Juan Fernandez, Which Gave
Me Only
Six shares, instead of sixty; and the people refused to allow me
an hundred pounds, which I had laid out
Of my own money, for necessary
supplies at the island of St Catharines.
I now found myself under many difficulties as to the course we were to
pursue, because the company knew well enough that there was no necessity
of going farther than the lat. of 13 deg. N. for going to the East Indies. I
had therefore to represent the advantage of cleaning and repairing our
ship at Porto Segnro, in California, and I had much difficulty to
persuade them. I at last brought them to my purpose, when we sailed from
Cano northwards. Having inconstant gales and bad weather, we went
between seventy and eighty leagues out to sea, in hopes of meeting more
settled weather. When at sixty leagues from the land, the winds still
continued variable, but at between seventy and eighty, they settled at
E.N.E. and N.E. at which distance we continued till in lat. 20 deg. N. not
being sensible of any currents in all that distance, and being also
entirely out of the way of the frightful ripplings and overfalls of
water which we used frequently to meet with nearer the land. These used
often to alarm us when becalmed in deep water, hearing a noise as of the
fall of water in passing through a bridge, a considerable time before it
came up to us, and which afterwards passed us at a very great rate. All
the effect this had on the ship, was to make her answer the helm wildly,
if we had any wind; and when we happened to meet any of these moving
waters very near the shore, we could not perceive that we either gained
or lost ground, though we sometimes continued in them for a quarter of
an hour. I have seen these overfalls to come both from the eastward and
the westward. By getting well out to sea, we not only got clear of these
inconveniences, but also were out of the way of the vandevals, or
black season, which had already begun on the coast; for at Cano, and in
going there, we felt very hard gusts, with black rolling water, frequent
and violent thunder and lightning, and heavy showers of rain.
In this passage we were continually accompanied by vast shoals of fish,
as dolphins, bonitas, albicores, and angel-fish. These last are shaped
like salmon, and have scales like them, but have tails like dolphins,
and nearly resemble them when, in the water, appearing in all the
beautiful colours displayed by the dolphin. Besides, they are the best
for eating of any fish that swim near the surface. We were continually
pestered with flocks of the birds called boobies, and their intolerably
stinking dung proved an indescribable nuisance, in spite of all the
pains that could be taken to clean our decks, yards, and tops.
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