Four or five of the most easterly were barren and rocky, without either trees, herbs, or grass, except very near the shore.  They produced also a sort of shrub, called dildo-tree, about the bigness of a man’s leg, and ten or twelve feet high, without either fruit or leaves, but covered with prickles from top to bottom.  The only water in these barren isles, was in ponds and holes in the rocks.  Some of the isles are low and more fertile, producing some of the trees that are known in Europe.  A few of the westermost isles are larger than the rest, being nine or ten leagues long, and six or seven broad, producing many trees, especially Mammee figs, and they have also some pretty large fresh-water streams, and many rivulets.  The air is continually refreshed, by the sea-breeze by day and the land-winds at night, so that they are not troubled with such excessive heats, neither are they so unwholesome as most places so near the equator.  During the rainy season, in November, December, and January, they are infested with violent tempests of thunder and lightning; but before and after these months have only refreshing showers, and in their summer, which is in May, June, July, and August, they are without any rains.

They anchored near several of these islands, and frequently found sea tortoises basking in the sun at noon.  On a former occasion, Captain Davies came to anchor on the west side of these islands, where he and his men subsisted on land-tortoises for three months, and saved from them sixty jars of oil.  He also found several good channels on that side, with anchorage between the isles, and several rivulets of fresh water, with plenty of trees for fuel.  The sea also round these islands is well stored with good fish of a large size, and abounds in sharks.  These islands are better stored with guanoes and land-tortoises than any other part of the world.  The guanoes are very tame, of extraordinary size, and very fat.  The land-tortoises are likewise very fat, and so numerous that several hundred men might subsist upon them for a considerable time.  They are as pleasant food as a pullet, and so large that some of them weighed 150 and even 200 pounds, being two feet to two feet and a half across the belly; whereas in other places they are seldom met with above 30 pounds weight.  There are several kinds of land-tortoises in the West Indies, one of which, called Hackatee by the Spaniards, keeps mostly in fresh-water ponds, having long necks, small legs, and flat feet, and is usually between ten and fifteen pounds weight.  A second, and much smaller kind, which they call Tenopen,[153] is somewhat rounder, but not unlike in other respects, except that their back shells are naturally covered with curious carved work.  The tortoises in the Gallapagos isles resembles the Hackatee, having long necks and small heads, but are much larger.

[Footnote 153:  This word in the text is probably a misprint for Terrapin, a trivial name for a species of land or fresh-water tortoise, found also in the warmer parts of North America—­E.]