On the 13th of November the squadron weighed from the Rio de Mares and stood to the eastwards, intending to proceed in search of the island called Bohio by the Indians; but the wind blowing hard from the north, they were constrained to come to an anchor among some high islands on the coast of Cuba, near a large port which the admiral named Puerta del Principe, or the Princes Port, and he called the sea among these islands the Sea of our Lady.  These islands lay so thick and close together, that most of them were only a musket-shot asunder, and the farthest not more than the quarter of a league.  The channels between these islands were so deep, and the shores so beautifully adorned with trees and plants of infinite varieties, that it was quite delightful to sail among them.  Among the multitude of other trees, there were great numbers of mastic, aloes, and palms, with long smooth green trunks, and other plants innumerable.  Though these islands were not inhabited, there were seen the remains of many fires which had been made by the fishermen; for it appeared afterwards, that the people of Cuba were in use to go over in great numbers in their canoes to these islands, and to a great number of other uninhabited islets in these seas, to live upon fish, which they catch in great abundance, and upon birds, crabs, and other things which they find on the land.  The Indians are by no means nice in their choice of food, but eat many things which are abhorred by us Europeans, such as large spiders, the worms that breed in rotten wood and other corrupt places, and devour their fish almost raw; for before roasting a fish, they scoop out the eyes and eat them.  The Indians follow this employment of fishing and bird-catching according to the seasons, sometimes in one island, sometimes in another, as a person changes his diet when weary of living on one kind of food.

In one of the islands in the Sea of our Lady, the Spaniards killed a quadruped resembling a badger, and in the sea they found considerable quantities of mother-of-pearl.  Among other fish which they caught in their nets, was one resembling a swine, which was covered all over with a very hard skin except the tail, which was quite soft.  In this sea among the islands, the tide was observed to rise and fall much more than in the other places where they had been hitherto; and was quite contrary to ours in Spain, as it was low water when the moon was S.W. and by S.

On Monday the 19th November, the admiral departed from the Princes Port in Cuba and the Sea of our Lady, and steered eastwards in search of Bohio; but owing to contrary winds, he was forced to ply two or three days between the island of Isabella, called Saomotto by the Indians, and the Puerta del Principe, which lie almost due north and south, at about twenty-five leagues distance.  In this sea he still found traces of those weeds which he had seen in the ocean, and perceived that they always swam with the current and never athwart.