This part of Masafuero is a very good place for refreshment, especially in the summer season: the goats have been mentioned already, and there is all round the island such plenty of fish, that a boat may, with three hooks and lines, catch as much as will serve an hundred people: among others we caught excellent coal fish, cavallies, cod, hallibut, and crayfish. We took a king-fisher that weighed eighty-seven pounds, and was five feet and an half long, and the sharks were so ravenous, that when we were sounding one of them swallowed the lead, by which we hauled him above water, but as he then disgorged it, we lost him. The seals were so numerous, that I verily think if many thousands of them were killed in a night, they would not be missed in the morning: we were obliged to kill great numbers of them, as, when we walked the shore, they were continually running against us, making at the same time a most horrible noise. These animals yield excellent train oil, and their hearts and plucks are very good eating, being in taste something like those of a hog, and their skins are covered with the finest fur I ever saw of the kind. There are many birds here, and among others some very large hawks. Of the pintado birds, our people, as I have before observed, caught no less than seven hundred in one night. We had not much opportunity to examine the place for vegetable productions, but we saw several leaves of the mountain cabbage, which is a proof that the tree grows here.

Voyaging Accounts