we found three or four large towns on the island at which we anchored.  The westmost of these islands, which the Dutch among us named Orange isle, is the largest, being seven or eight leagues from N. to S. and two from E. to W. There are two other large islands to the S. of this; the northern of which we named Grafton isle, which is four leagues from N. to S. and a league and a half from E. to W. The other, and most southerly, we named Monmouth isle, being three leagues from N. to S. and one from E. to W. Two other isles, lying E. and W. between Monmouth isle and the S. end of Orange isle, we called Bashee isle, from a certain liquor we drank there, and Goat isle.

Orange isle is the largest, but barren, rocky, and uninhabited, and has no anchorage on its coasts. Monmouth and Grafton isles are both hilly, but well inhabited. Goat isle and Bashee isle are flat, the former having a town.  The hills in all these isles are rocky; but the intermediate vallies are fertile in grass, plantains, bananas, pine-apples, pompions, sugar-canes, potatoes, and some cotton, and are well supplied with brooks of fresh water.  They are also well stored with goats and hogs, but have hardly any fowls, either wild or tame.  The natives are short and thick, with round faces and thick eye-brows, with hazel-coloured eyes, rather small, yet larger than those of the Chinese.  Their noses are short and low; their mouths and lips middle-sized, with white teeth; and their hair is thick, black, and lank, which they cut short.  Their complexion is of a dark copper colour, and they go all bare-headed, having for the most part no clothes, except a clout about the middle, though some have jackets of plantain leaves, as rough as a bear-skin.  The women have a short petticoat of coarse calico, reaching a little below the knees, and both sexes wear ear-rings of a yellow metal dug from their mountains, having the weight and colour of gold, but somewhat paler.  Whether it be in reality gold or not, I cannot say, but it looked of a fine colour at first, which afterwards faded, which made us suspect it, and we therefore bought very little.  We observed that the natives smeared it with a red earth, and then made it red-hot in a quick fire, which restored its former colour.

The houses of the natives are small, and hardly five feet high, collected into villages on the sides of rocky hills, and built in three or four rows, one above the other.  These rocky precipices are framed by nature into different ledges, or deep steps of stairs as it were, on each of which they build a row of houses, ascending from one row to another by means of ladders in the middle of each row, and when these are removed they are inaccessible.  They live mostly by fishing, and are very expert in building boats, much like our Deal yawls.  They have also larger vessels, rowed by twelve or fourteen oars, two men to each bank.  They never kill any goats themselves,