We got our smith's forge ashore on the 3d February, and set our coopers to work to repair our water casks. They made a little tent also for me on shore, to enjoy the benefit of the land air. The two ships also set up tents for their sick, so that we had presently a kind of small town, in which all who were able were busily employed. A few men supplied us with excellent fish, in such abundance that they could take as many in a few hours as would serve 200 men for a meal. There were some sea-fowl in the bay, as large as geese, but they eat fishy. The governor, for so we called Mr Selkirk, never failed to procure us two or three goats every day for our sick men, by which, with the help of cabbages and other vegetables, and the wholesome air, our men soon recovered from the scurvy, and we found this island exceedingly agreeable, the weather being neither too hot nor too cold. We spent our time till the 10th in refitting our ships, taking wood on board, and laying in a stock of water, that which we brought from England, St Vincents, and Isla Grande, being spoilt by the badness of our casks. We also boiled up and refined eighty gallons of oil of sea-lions, which we used in lamps to save candles, and might have prepared several tons, if we had been provided with vessels. The sailors sometimes used this oil to fry their fish, for want of butter, and found it sufficiently agreeable. The men who worked ashore in repairing our rigging, eat the young seals, which they preferred to our ship's provisions, alleging that it was as good as English lamb. We made all the haste we could to get every thing on board, as we learnt at the Canaries that five stout French privateers were coming in company into the South Sea.
This island of Juan Fernandez is about fifteen English miles in length from E. to W. and five miles where broadest, but averaging little more than two miles in breadth, and is mostly composed of high rugged land. I know of nothing in its neighbourhood which may endanger a ship, except what is distinctly visible. We anchored in the great bay, [La Baia or Cumberland harbour] on the N.E. side, about a mile from the bottom of the bay, our best bower being dropt in forty fathoms, and the stream anchor carried in with the shore, where it was laid in about thirty fathoms. We here had plenty of several sorts of fish, as silver-fish, snappers, bonitoes, cavallos, pollocks, old wives, and cray-fish of great size. The wind blows here generally off the shore, sometimes in heavy squalls, but for the most part calm, and where we were moored the water was very smooth, owing to the winding of the shore. Mr Selkirk told us it had never blown towards the land above four hours, all the time he had been there. It is all hills and vallies, and would doubtless produce most plants usual in such climates, if manured and cultivated, as the soil promises well in most parts, and already grows turnips and some other roots, which I suppose were formerly sowed. It has plenty of wood and water, and abundance of wild goats.
There are such numbers of great sea-lions and other seals of various sorts, all having excellent furs, in every bay, that we could hardly walk about along shore for them, as they lay about in flocks like sheep, their young ones bleating for their dams like so many lambs. Some of these sea-lions are as big in the body as an English ox, and they roar like lions. They are covered with short hair of a light colour, which is still lighter on the young ones. I suppose they live partly on fish and partly on grass, for they come on shore by means of their fore paws, dragging their hind parts after them, and bask themselves in the sun in great numbers. They cut near a foot deep of fat, and we killed a good many of them for the sake of their oil, which is of good quality, but they are difficult to kill. Both sea-lions and seals were so numerous on the shore, that we had to drive them away before we could land, and they were so numerous as is hardly credible, making a most prodigious noise.
There are but few birds. One sort, called pardelas by the Spaniards, burrow in the ground like rabbits, and are said to be good eating. There are also humming-birds, not much larger than bumble bees, their bills no thicker than a pin, their legs proportional to their bodies, and their minute feathers of most beautiful colours. These are seldom taken or seen but in the evenings, when they fly about, and they flew sometimes at night into our fire. There is here a sort of cabbage tree, of the nature of a palm, producing small cabbages, but very sweet. The tree is slender and straight, with circular knobs on the stem fourteen inches above each other, and having no leaves except at the top. The branches are about twelve feet long, and at about a foot and a half from the body of the tree begin to shoot out leaves, which are four feet long and an inch broad, and so regularly placed that the whole branch seems one entire leaf. The cabbage, which grows out from the bottom of the branches, is about a foot long and very white; and at the bottom of this there grow clusters of berries, weighing five or six pounds, like bunches of grapes, as red as cherries and larger than our black-heart cherries, each having a large stone in the middle, and the pulp eats like our haws. These cabbage trees abound about three miles into the woods, the trunk being often eighty or ninety feet high, and is always cut down to get the cabbages, which are good eating; but most of them grow on the tops of the nearest mountains to the great bay.
We found here some Guinea pepper, and some silk cotton trees, besides several others with the names of which I am not acquainted. Pimento is the best timber, and the most plentiful at this side of the island, but it is very apt to split till it is a little dried. We cut the longest and cleanest to split for fire wood. In the nearest plain, we found abundance of turnip greens, and water-cresses in the brooks, which greatly refreshed our men, and quickly cured them of the scurvy. Mr Selkirk said the turnips formed good roots in our summer months, which are winter at this island; but this being autumn, they were all run up to seed, so that we had no benefit of them excepting their green leaves and shoots. The soil is a loose black earth, and the rocks are very rotten, so that it is dangerous to climb the hills for cabbages without great care. There are also many holes dug into the ground by a sort of birds called puffins, which give way in walking, and endanger the breaking or wrenching a limb. Mr Selkirk said he had seen snow and ice here in July, the depth of the southern winter; but in September, October, and November, the spring months, the climate is very pleasant, and there are then abundance of excellent herbs, as purslein, parsley, and sithes. We found also an herb, not unlike feverfew, which proved very useful to our surgeons for fomentations. It has a most grateful smell like balm, but stronger and more cordial, and grew in plenty near the shore. We gathered many large bundles of it, which were dried in the shade, and sent aboard for after-use, besides strewing the tents with it fresh gathered every morning, which tended much to the recovery of our sick, of whom, though numerous when we came here, only two died belonging to the Duchess. We found the nights very cold, and the days not near so warm as might have been expected in so low a latitude. It hardly ever rains, instead of which there fall very heavy dews in the night, which serve the purposes of rain, and the air is almost perpetually serene.
The 13th February we held a consultation, in which we framed several regulations for preserving secrecy, discipline, and strict honesty in both vessels: and on the 17th we determined that two men from the Duke should serve in the Duchess, and two of her men in the Duke, to see that justice was reciprocally done by each ship's company to the other. The 28th we tried both pinnaces in the water under sail, having a gun fixed in each, and every thing else requisite to render them very useful small privateers.
SECTION II.
Proceedings of the Expedition on the Western Coast of America.
In the evening of the 13th March[220] we saw a sail, and the Duchess being nearest soon took her. She was a small bark of sixteen tons from Payta, bound to Cheripe for flour, having a small sum of money on board to make the purchase, being commanded by a Mestizo, or one begotten between a Spaniard and an Indian, having a crew of eight men, one a Spaniard, another a negro, and all the rest Indians. On asking for news, we were told, that all the French ships, being seven in number, had left the South Sea six months before, and no more were to come there; adding, that the Spaniards had such an aversion to them, that they had killed many Frenchmen at Callao, the port of Lima, and quarrelled with them so frequently that none of them were suffered to come ashore there for some time before they sailed.
[Footnote 220: It is quite obvious that they had now left Juan Fernandez, but this circumstance and its date are omitted by Harris.--E.]