beasts of several kinds in the soil, near a pond of salt water, and among them a very large tyger:  We found also a nest of ostrich’s eggs, which we eat, and thought very good.  It is probable that all the animals which had left marks of their feet near the salt pond, drank the water, and indeed we saw no fresh water for them.  The spring that we had found, which was not perfectly fresh, was the only one of the kind that we had been able to discover; and for that we had been obliged to dig, there being no appearance of it except a slight moisture of the ground.

On the 24th, upon slack water, we carried both the ships higher up and moored them:  The extreme points of the harbour’s mouth at low water bore from E. by S.1/4 S. to E.; and the Steeple rock S.E.1/4 E. We had here, at low water, but six fathom; but at spring tides the water rises no less than four fathom and a half, which is seven-and-twenty feet.  The tide indeed in this place is such as perhaps it is not in any other.[13] It happened by some accident that one of our men fell overboard; the boats were all alongside, and the man was an exceeding good swimmer, yet before any assistance could be sent after him, the rapidity of the stream, had hurried him almost out of sight; we had however at last the good fortune to save him.  This day I was again on shore, and walked six or seven miles up the country:  I saw several hares as large as a fawn; I shot one of them, which weighed more than six and twenty pounds, and if I had had a good greyhound, I dare say the ship’s company might have lived upon hare two days in the week.  In the mean time the people on board were busy in getting up all the cables upon deck, and clearing the hold, that a proper quantity of ballast might be taken in, and the guns lowered into it, except a few which it might be thought necessary to keep above.

[Footnote 13:  “The harbour itself is not much more than half a mile over.  On the south shore is a remarkable rock in the form of a tower, which appears on entering the harbour’s mouth.  Abreast of this rock we lay at anchor in seven or eight fathom water, moored to the east and west, with both bowers, which we found extremely necessary, on account of the strong tide that regularly ebbs and flows every twelve hours.  Indeed the ebb is so rapid, that we found by our log-line it continued to run five or six knots an hour; and in ten minutes after the ebb is past, the flood returns with equal velocity; besides, the wind generally blows during the whole night out of the harbour.”]

On the 25th, I went a good way up the harbour in the boat, and having landed on the north side, we soon after found an old oar of a very singular make, and the barrel of a musket, with the king’s broad arrow upon it.  The musket-barrel had suffered so much from the weather, that it might be crumbled to dust between the fingers:  I imagined it had been left there by the Wager’s people, or perhaps by Sir John Narborough.  Hitherto we had found