The 4th of April, five ships departed for Goa, in which, besides mariners and soldiers, there were a great number of children, who bear the sea much better than men, as also do many women.  I need not tell you, as you may easily imagine the solemnity of setting out, with sound of trumpets and discharges of cannon, as they go forth in a warlike manner.  The 10th of the same month we came in sight of Porto Sancto near Madeira, where an English ship set upon ours, now entirely alone, and fired several shots which did us no harm:  But when our ship had run out her largest ordnance, the English ship made away from us.  This English ship was large and handsome, and I was sorry to see her so ill occupied, as she went roving about the seas, and we met her again at the Canaries, where we arrived on the 13th of the same month of April, and had good opportunity to wonder at the high peaked mountain in the island of Teneriffe, as we beat about between that island and Grand Canary for four days with contrary winds, and indeed had such evil weather till the 14th of May, that we despaired of being able to double the Cape of Good Hope that year.  Yet, taking our course between Guinea and the Cape de Verd islands, without seeing any land at all, we arrived at the coast of Guinea, as the Portuguese call that part of the western coast of Africa in the torrid zone, from the lat. of 6 deg.  N. to the equinoctial; in which parts they suffer so much by extreme heats and want of wind, that they think themselves happy when past it.  Sometimes the ships stand quite still and becalmed for many days, and sometimes they go on, but in such a manner that they had almost as good stand still.  The atmosphere on the greatest part of this coast is never clear, but thick and cloudy, full of thunder and lightening, and such unwholesome rain, that the water on standing only a little while is full of animalculae, and by falling on any meat that is hung out, fills it immediately with worms.

All along that coast, we oftentimes saw a thing swimming in the water like a cocks comb but much fairer, which they call a Guinea ship[399].  It is borne up in the water by a substance almost like the swimming bladder of a fish in size and colour, having many strings from it under water, which prevent it from being overturned.  It is so poisonous, that one cannot touch it without much danger.  On this coast, between the sixth degree of north latitude and the equator, we spent no less than thirty days either in calms or contrary winds.  The 30th of May we crossed the line with great difficulty, directing our course as well as we could to pass the promontory[400], but in all that gulf of Guinea, and all the rest of the way to the Cape, we found such frequent calms that the most experienced mariners were much astonished.  In places where there always used to be horrible tempests, we found most invincible calms, which were very troublesome to our ships, which being of the greatest size cannot