eautiful shells for variety of colour and
shape, most finely spotted with red, black, or yellow, etc., such as I
have not seen anywhere but at this place. I brought away a great many of
them, but lost all except a very few, and those not of the best.
There are also some green turtle weighing about two hundred pounds. Of
these we caught two, which the water ebbing had left behind a ledge of
rock which they could not creep over. These served all my company two
days, and they were indifferent sweet meat. Of the sharks we caught a
great many, which our men ate very savourily. Among them we caught one
which was eleven feet long. The space between its two eyes was twenty
inches, and eighteen inches from one corner of his mouth to the other.
Its maw was like a leather sack, very thick, and so tough that a sharp
knife could scarce cut it, in which we found the head and bones of a
hippopotamus, the hairy lips of which were still sound and not putrified,
and the jaw was also firm, out of which we plucked a great many teeth,
two of them eight inches long and as big as a man's thumb, small at one
end, and a little crooked, the rest not above half so long. The maw was
full of jelly, which stank extremely. However, I saved for awhile the
teeth and the shark's jaw. The flesh of it was divided among my men, and
they took care that no waste should be made of it.
It was the 7th of August when we came into Shark's Bay, in which we
anchored at three several places, and stayed at the first of them (on the
west side of the bay) till the 11th, during which time we searched about,
as I said, for fresh water, digging wells, but to no purpose. However,
we cut good store of firewood at this first anchoring-place, and my
company were all here very well refreshed with raccoons, turtle, shark,
and other fish, and some fowls, so that we were now all much brisker than
when we came in hither. Yet still I was for standing farther into the
bay, partly because I had a mind to increase my stock of fresh water,
which was begun to be low, and partly for the sake of discovering this
part of the coast. I was invited to go further by seeing from this
anchoring-place all open before me, which therefore I designed to search
before I left the bay. So on the 11th about noon I steered further in,
with an easy sail, because we had but shallow water. We kept, therefore,
good looking out for fear of shoals, sometimes shortening, sometimes
deepening the
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