being neither too hot nor too cold.  We spent our time till the 10th in refitting our ships, taking wood on board, and laying in a stock of water, that which we brought from England, St Vincents, and Isla Grande, being spoilt by the badness of our casks.  We also boiled up and refined eighty gallons of oil of sea-lions, which we used in lamps to save candles, and might have prepared several tons, if we had been provided with vessels.  The sailors sometimes used this oil to fry their fish, for want of butter, and found it sufficiently agreeable.  The men who worked ashore in repairing our rigging, eat the young seals, which they preferred to our ship’s provisions, alleging that it was as good as English lamb.  We made all the haste we could to get every thing on board, as we learnt at the Canaries that five stout French privateers were coming in company into the South Sea.

This island of Juan Fernandez is about fifteen English miles in length from E. to W. and five miles where broadest, but averaging little more than two miles in breadth, and is mostly composed of high rugged land.  I know of nothing in its neighbourhood which may endanger a ship, except what is distinctly visible.  We anchored in the great bay, [La Baia or Cumberland harbour] on the N.E. side, about a mile from the bottom of the bay, our best bower being dropt in forty fathoms, and the stream anchor carried in with the shore, where it was laid in about thirty fathoms.  We here had plenty of several sorts of fish, as silver-fish, snappers, bonitoes, cavallos, pollocks, old wives, and cray-fish of great size.  The wind blows here generally off the shore, sometimes in heavy squalls, but for the most part calm, and where we were moored the water was very smooth, owing to the winding of the shore.  Mr Selkirk told us it had never blown towards the land above four hours, all the time he had been there.  It is all hills and vallies, and would doubtless produce most plants usual in such climates, if manured and cultivated, as the soil promises well in most parts, and already grows turnips and some other roots, which I suppose were formerly sowed.  It has plenty of wood and water, and abundance of wild goats.

There are such numbers of great sea-lions and other seals of various sorts, all having excellent furs, in every bay, that we could hardly walk about along shore for them, as they lay about in flocks like sheep, their young ones bleating for their dams like so many lambs.  Some of these sea-lions are as big in the body as an English ox, and they roar like lions.  They are covered with short hair of a light colour, which is still lighter on the young ones.  I suppose they live partly on fish and partly on grass, for they come on shore by means of their fore paws, dragging their hind parts after them, and bask themselves in the sun in great numbers.  They cut near a foot deep of fat, and we killed a good many of them for the sake of their oil, which is of good quality, but they are difficult to kill.  Both sea-lions and seals were so numerous on the shore, that we had to drive them away before we could land, and they were so numerous as is hardly credible, making a most prodigious noise.