As soon as the ship was secured, I went on shore, to fix upon a place where tents might be erected for the sick, which were now very numerous; not a single man being wholly free from the scurvy, and many in the last stage of it. We found several huts which had been left by the Spaniards and Indians the year before; for this year none of them had as yet been at the place, nor was it probable that they should come for some months, the sun being now almost vertical, and the rainy season set in. After I had fixed upon a spot for the tents, six or seven of us endeavoured to push through the woods, that we might come at the beautiful lawns and meadows of which there is so luxuriant a description in the Account of Lord Anson’s Voyage, and if possible kill some cattle. The trees stood so thick, and the place was so overgrown with underwood, that we could not see three yards before us, we therefore were obliged to keep continually hallooing to each other, to prevent our being separately lost in this trackless wilderness. As the weather was intolerably hot, we had nothing on besides our shoes, except our shirts and trowsers, and these were in a very short time torn all to rags by the bushes and brambles; at last, however, with incredible difficulty and labour, we got through; but, to our great surprise and disappointment, we found the country very different from the account we had read of it: the lawns were entirely overgrown with a stubborn kind of reed or brush, in many places higher than our heads, and no where lower than our middles, which continually entangled our legs, and cut us like whipcord; our

Voyaging Accounts