o try our fortune in the East Indies. With
this view we sailed from Cape Corientes on the 31st March, and next
noon, being thirty leagues from the cape, clear of the land-winds, we
had the wind at E.N.E. in which direction it continued till we were
within forty leagues of Guam. In all this long passage across the
Pacific, nearly in the lat. of 13 deg. N. we saw neither fish nor fowl
except once, when by my reckoning we were 5975 miles west from Cape
Corientes in Mexico, and then we saw a vast number of _boobies_,
supposed to come from some rocks not far off, which are laid down in
some hydrographical charts, but we saw them not.

May 20th, at four p.m. being in lat. 12 deg. 55' N. and steering W. we
discovered, to our great joy, the island of Guam, eight leagues off,
having now only three-days provisions left. _Guam_ is one of the
Ladrones, in lat. 13 deg. 15' N. and long. 216 deg. 50' W. consequently its
meridional distance from Cape Corientes on the coast of Mexico is 111 deg.
14', or about 7730 English miles. It is twelve leagues long by four
broad, extending north and south, and is defended by a small fort
mounted by six guns, and a garrison of thirty men with a Spanish
governor, for the convenience of the Manilla ships, which touch here for
refreshments on their voyage from Acapulco to Manilla. The soil is
tolerably fertile, producing rice, pine-apples, water and musk melons,
oranges, limes, cocoa-nuts, and bread-fruit. This last grows on a tree
as big as our apple-trees, with dark green leaves. The fruit is round
and as large as a good penny-loaf,[191] growing on the boughs like
apples. When ripe it turns yellow, with a soft and sweet pulp; but the
natives pull it green, and bake it in an oven till the rind grows black.
They scrape off the rind, and the inside is soft and white, like the
crumb of new-baked bread, having neither seed nor stone; but it grows
harsh if kept twenty-four hours. As this fruit is in season for eight
months in the year, the natives use no other bread in all that time,
and they told us there was plenty of it in all the other Ladrone
islands.

[Footnote 191: This vague description may now safely be changed to the
size of a three-penny, or even four-penny loaf--E.]

On the 31st May we came to anchor near the middle of the west side of
this isle, a mile from shore, as there is no anchoring on its east side
on account of the trade-winds, which force the waves with great violence
against that