Our sea-stock, besides the small quantity of beef and cassada flour formerly mentioned, consisted of 2300 eels cured in smoke, weighing one with another about a pound each, together with about sixty gallons of seal-oil, in which to fry them.  On our first landing, as the weather was then too coarse for fishing, we had to live on seals, the entrails of which are tolerable food; but the constant and prodigious slaughter we made among them, frightened them from our side of the island.  Some of the people eat cats, which I could not bring myself to, and declared they were sweet nourishing food.  When the weather allowed us to fish, we were delivered from these hardships; but some of our mischievous crew set the boat a-drift, so that she was lost:  after which we contrived wicker boats, covered with sea-lions skins, which did well enough near shore, but we durst not venture in them out into the bay, and consequently were worse provided with fish than we might otherwise have been.  We fried our fish in seal-oil, and eat it without bread or salt, or any other relish, except some wild sorrel.  Our habitations were very wretched, being only covered by boughs of trees, with the skins of seals and sea-lions, which were often torn off in the night, by sudden flaws of wind from the mountains.

The island of Juan Fernandez is in lat 33 deg. 40’ S. and long. 79 deg.  W. being at the distance of about 150 marine leagues, or 7 deg. 30’ from the coast of Chili.  It is about fifteen English miles long from E. to W. and five miles at the broadest, from N to S. entirely composed of mountains and valleys, so that there is no walking a quarter of a mile on a flat.  The anchoring place is on the north side of the island, and is distinguished by a little mountain, with a high peak on each side.  It is not safe to anchor in less than forty fathoms, and even there, ships are very much exposed to sharp gales from the north, which blow frequently.  There cannot well be a more unpleasant place to anchor in, as the bay is surrounded by high mountains, and is subject to alternate dead calms and sudden stormy gusts of wind.  This island enjoys a fine wholesome air, insomuch that out of seventy of us, who remained here five months and eleven days, not one among us had an hour’s sickness, though we fed upon such foul diet, without bread or salt; so that we had no complaints among us, except an incessant craving appetite, and the want of our former strength and vigour.  As for myself, from being corpulent, and almost crippled by the gout, I lost much of my flesh, but became one of the strongest and most active men on the island, walking much about, working hard, and never in the least afflicted with that distemper.  The soil is fertile, and abounds with many large and beautiful trees, most of them aromatic.  The names of such as we knew were the Pimento, which bears a leaf like a myrtle, but somewhat larger, with a blue blossom, the trunks being short and thick, and the heads bushy and round,