nailed on a post, and fixed up before their departure,
which being now discovered by the people to be near at hand, they
could not forbear perpetual lamentations. When the English, on the
23rd of July, weighed anchor, they saw them climbing to the tops of
hills, that they might keep them in sight, and observed fires lighted
up in many parts of the country, on which, as they supposed,
sacrifices were offered.

Near this harbour they touched at some islands, where they found great
numbers of seals; and, despairing now to find any passage through the
northern parts, he, after a general consultation, determined to steer
away to the Moluccas, and setting sail July 25th, he sailed for
sixty-eight days without sight of land; and, on September 30th,
arrived within view of some islands, situate about eight degrees
northward from the line, from whence the inhabitants resorted to them
in canoes, hollowed out of the solid trunk of a tree, and raised at
both ends so high above the water, that they seemed almost a
semicircle; they were burnished in such a manner that they shone like
ebony, and were kept steady by a piece of timber, fixed on each side
of them, with strong canes, that were fastened at one end to the boat,
and at the other to the end of the timber.

The first company that came brought fruits, potatoes, and other things
of no great value, with an appearance of traffick, and exchanged their
lading for other commodities, with great show of honesty and
friendship; but having, as they imagined, laid all suspicion asleep,
they soon sent another fleet of canoes, of which the crews behaved
with all the insolence of tyrants, and all the rapacity of thieves;
for, whatever was suffered to come into their hands, they seemed to
consider as their own, and would neither pay for it, nor restore it;
and, at length, finding the English resolved to admit them no longer,
they discharged a shower of stones from their boats, which insult
Drake prudently and generously returned, by ordering a piece of
ordnance to be fired without hurting them, at which they were so
terrified, that they leaped into the water, and hid themselves under
the canoes.

Having, for some time, but little wind, they did not arrive at the
Moluccas till the 3rd of November, and then, designing to touch at
Tidore, they were visited, as they sailed by a little island belonging
to the king of Ternate, by the viceroy of the place, who informed
them, that it would be more