We Then Went Into A Sound, Where We Remained About Three Weeks, Naming
It The Port Of Health, As Most Of Our Men, Having Been Sick With Long
Watching, Wet, Cold, And Bad Diet, Did Wonderfully Recover Their Health
Here In A Short Space, For Which Praised Be God.
We found here muscles
of very great size, some being twenty inches long, yielding very
pleasant meat, and many of them full of seed pearls.
We came out of this
harbour on the 1st November, abandoning our voyage by compulsion of Mr.
Winter, sore against the will of the mariners. Mr. Winter alleged that
he despaired of having winds to carry him to the coast of Peru, and was
also in fear that Mr. Drake had perished. So we went back again to the
eastwards through the straits, to St. George's island, where we laid in
a quantity of a certain kind of fowl, very plentiful in that island, the
meat of which is not much unlike that of a fat English goose. They have
no wings, but only short pinions, which serve them in swimming, being of
a black colour, mixed with white spots on their bellies and round their
necks. They walk so upright, that they seem afar like little children;
and when approached they conceal themselves in holes under ground, not
very deep, of which the island is full. To take them, we used sticks
having hooks fastened at one end, with which we pulled them out, while
other men stood by with cudgels to knock them on the head; for they bit
so cruelly with their hooked bills, that we could not handle them when
alive.[42]
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