The next day we sounded the harbour higher up, and found the ground softer, and the water not so deep; yet the wind continued to blow so hard that we could not venture to change our station. We had found a small spring of water about half a mile inland, upon the north side of the bay, but it had a brackish taste; I had also made another excursion of several miles into the country, which I found barren and desolate, in every direction, as far as the eye could reach. We had seen many guanicoes at a distance, but we could not get near enough to have a shot at them; we tracked beasts of several kinds in the soil, near a pond of salt water, and among them a very large tyger: we found also a nest of ostriches eggs, which we eat, and thought very good. It is probable that all the animals which had left marks of their feet near the salt pond, drank the water, and indeed we saw no fresh water for them. The spring that we had found, which was not perfectly fresh, was the only one of the kind that we had been able to discover; and for that we had been obliged to dig, there being no appearance of it except a slight moisture of the ground.

On the 24th, upon slack water, we carried both the ships higher up and moored them: the extreme points of the harbour’s mouth at low water bore from E. by S. ¼#188; S. to E.; and the Steeple rock S.E.¼#188; E. We had here, at low water, but six fathom; but at spring tides the water rises no less than four fathom and an half, which is seven and twenty feet. The tide indeed in this place is such as perhaps it is not in any other. It happened by some accident that one of our men fell overboard; the boats were all alongside, and the man was an exceeding good swimmer, yet before any assistance

Voyaging Accounts