On Our First Landing, As The Weather Was
Then Too Coarse For Fishing, We Had To Live On Seals, The Entrails Of
Which Are Tolerable Food; But The Constant And Prodigious Slaughter We
Made Among Them, Frightened Them From Our Side Of The Island.
Some of
the people eat cats, which I could not bring myself to, and declared
they were sweet nourishing food.
When the weather allowed us to fish, we
were delivered from these hardships; but some of our mischievous crew
set the boat a-drift, so that she was lost: after which we contrived
wicker boats, covered with sea-lions skins, which did well enough near
shore, but we durst not venture in them out into the bay, and
consequently were worse provided with fish than we might otherwise have
been. We fried our fish in seal-oil, and eat it without bread or salt,
or any other relish, except some wild sorrel. Our habitations were very
wretched, being only covered by boughs of trees, with the skins of seals
and sea-lions, which were often torn off in the night, by sudden flaws
of wind from the mountains.
The island of Juan Fernandez is in lat 33 deg. 40' S. and long. 79 deg. W. being
at the distance of about 150 marine leagues, or 7 deg. 30' from the coast
of Chili. It is about fifteen English miles long from E. to W. and five
miles at the broadest, from N to S. entirely composed of mountains and
valleys, so that there is no walking a quarter of a mile on a flat.
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