ming near the shore, I found it to be a steeply
rising coast, full of rocks and stones, with the surf running violently;
nevertheless 6 of our men swam ashore, and we remained at anchor with the
pinnace in 25 fathom outside the surf. The men now searched for water
everywhere until nightfall, without, however, finding any; they also saw
four men coming up to them, creeping on all fours, but when our men all
of a sudden emerged from a depression of the ground, and approached them,
they sprang to their feet, and ran off in full career, all which we could
distinctly see from the pinnace. They were black men, stark naked,
without the least covering. In the evening our men swam on board again,
all of them grievously wounded by the rocks on which they been dashed by
the breakers. We therefore weighed anchor again to seek a better place
for landing, and ran on during the night with small sail close along the
shore, but out of the reach of the surf.

On the 15th do. in the morning we were near a point of the coast off
which a large reef extended about a mile in length, we ran in between the
land and this reef, which we estimated to be in 23 deg. Lat., and thus sailed
along the coast, along which there was another reef, inside which the
water seemed to be very smooth and still; we did our best to get inside
this second reef, but did not find an opening before noon, when we saw a
passage where there was no surf, we ran into it, but found it to be full
of stones, and sometimes no more than one or two feet deep.

This coast had a foreshore covered with dunes about a mile in width,
before you come to the higher part. We therefore began to dig in divers
places, but the water proved to be salt; some of us went to the higher
land, where by good luck we found in a rock a number of cavities, in
which a quantity of rain-water had collected. It also seemed that a short
time before there had been natives there, for we found some crab-shells
lying about and here and there fire-ashes. Here we somewhat quenched our
cruel thirst, which almost prevented us from dragging ourselves along,
for since the loss of our ship we had had no more than one or two
mutchkins daily, without any wine or other drink. Besides quenching our
own thirst, we here gathered about 80 cans of water, and remained there
for the night.

On the 16th do. in the morning we continued our exploration in order to
find out whether there were more water-pits in the mountains, but o