This made them hunt the goats with the more eagerness, and indeed, they surrounded them so dexterously, and followed them so nimbly, that notwithstanding the difficulties of the rocks, yet the goats could hardly ever escape them. Here our men found also very good fish, and some few tortoises, or turtles, as the seamen call them, but they valued them not, when they had such plenty of venison; also they found some very good herbs in the island, which they boiled with the goats' flesh, and which made their broth very savoury and comfortable, and withal very healing, and good against the scurvy, which in those climates Englishmen are very subject to.
We were now come to the month of April, 1715, having spent almost eight months in this trafficking wandering voyage from Manilla hither. And whoever shall follow the same, or a like track, if ever such a thing shall happen, will do well to make a year of it, and may find it very well worth while.
I doubt not but there are many undiscovered parts of land to the west, and to the south also, of the first shore, of which I mentioned, that we stayed trafficking for little bits of gold. And though it is true that such traffick, as I have given an account of, is very advantageous in itself, and worth while to look for, especially after having had a good market for an out-ward-bound European cargo, according to the pattern of ours, at the Philippines, and which, by the way, they need not miss, I say, as this trade for gold would be well worth while, so had we gone the best way, and taken a course more to the south from Manilla, not going away east to the Ladrones, we should certainly have fallen in with a country, from the coast of New Guinea, where we might have found plenty of spices, as well as of gold.
For why may we not be allowed to suppose that the country on the same continent, and in the same latitude, should produce the same growth? Especially considering them situated, as it may be called, in the neighbourhood of one another.
Had we then proceeded this way, no question but we might have fixed on some place for a settlement, either English or French, whence a correspondence being established with Europe, either by Cape Horn east, or the Cape De Bona Esperance west, as we had thought fit, they might have found as great a production of the nutmegs and the cloves as at Banda and Ternate, or have made those productions have been planted there for the future, where no doubt they would grow and thrive as well as they do now in the Moluccas.
But we spun out too much time for the business we did; and though we might, as above, discover new places, and get very well too, yet we did nothing in comparison of what we might be supposed to have done, had we made the discovery more our business.
I cannot doubt, also, but that when we stood away south it was too late; for had we stood into the latitude of 67° at first, as we did afterwards, I have good reason to believe that those islands which we call the Moluccas, and which lie so thick and for so great an extent, go on yet farther, and it is scarce to be imagined that they break off just with Gilloto.
This I call a mistake in me, namely, that I stood away east from the Philippines to the Ladrones, before I had gone any length to the south.
But to come to the course set down in this work, namely, south-east and by east from the Ladrones, the places I have taken notice of, as these do not, in my opinion, appear to be inconsiderable and of no value, so had we searched farther into them, I doubt not but there are greater things to be discovered, and perhaps a much greater extent of land also. For as I have but just, as it were, described the shell, having made no search for the kernel, it is more than probable, that within the country there might be greater discoveries made, of immense value too. For even, as I observed several times, whenever we found any people who had gold, and asked them, as well as by signs we could make them understand, they always pointed to the rivers and the mountains which lay farther up the country, and which we never made any discovery of, having little in our view but the getting what little share of gold the poor people had about them. Whereas had we taken possession of the place, and left a number of men sufficient to support themselves, in making a farther search, I cannot doubt but there must be a great deal of that of which the inactive Indians had gotten but a little.
Nor had we one skilful man among us to view the face of the earth, and see what treasure of choice vegetables might be there. We had indeed six very good surgeons, and one of them, whom we took in among the Madagascar men, was a man of great reading and judgment; but he acknowledged he had no skill in botanics, having never made it his study.