In All This Long Passage Across The
Pacific, Nearly In The Lat.
Of 13 deg.
N. we saw neither fish nor fowl
except once, when by my reckoning we were 5975 miles west from Cape
Corientes in Mexico, and then we saw a vast number of boobies,
supposed to come from some rocks not far off, which are laid down in
some hydrographical charts, but we saw them not.
May 20th, at four p.m. being in lat. 12 deg. 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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 434 of 825
Words from 117533 to 117783
of 224764
