the west
point of the island than I had ever done yet, and looking out to sea, I
thought I saw a boat upon the sea at a great distance; I had found a
perspective glass or two in one of the seamen's chests, which I saved
out of our ship; but I had it not about me, and this was so remote, that
I could not tell what to make of it, though I looked at it till my eyes
were not able to look any longer: whether it was a boat, or not, I do
not know; but as I descended from the hill, I could see no more of it,
so I gave it over; only I resolved to go no more without a perspective
glass in my pocket.

When I was come down the hill, to the end of the island, where indeed I
had never been before, I was presently convinced, that the seeing the
print of a man's foot, was not such a strange thing in the island as I
imagined; and, but that it was a special providence that I was cast upon
the side of the island where the savages never came, I should easily
have known, that nothing was more frequent than for the canoes from the
main, when, they happened to be a little too far out at sea, to shoot
over to that side of the island for harbour; likewise, as they often
met, and fought in their canoes, the victors, having taken any
prisoners, would bring them over to this shore, where, according to
their dreadful customs, being all cannibals, they would kill and eat
them: of which hereafter.

When I was come down the hill to the shore, as I said above, being the
S.W. point of the island, I was perfectly confounded and amazed; nor is
it possible for me to express the horror of my mind, at seeing the shore
spread with skulls, hands, feet, and other bones of human bodies; and
particularly I observed a place where there had been a fire made, and a
circle dug in the earth, like a cock-pit, where it is supposed the
savage wretches had sat down to their inhuman feastings upon the bodies
of their fellow-creatures.

I was so astonished with the sight of these things, that I entertained
no notions of any danger to myself from it, for a long while; all my
apprehensions were buried in the thoughts of such a pitch of inhuman,
hellish brutality, and the horror of the degeneracy of human nature;
which, though I had heard of often, yet I never had so near a view of
before: in short, I turned away my face from the horrid spectacle; my
stomach grew sick, and I was just at the point of fainting, when nature
discharged the disorder from my stomach, and, having