not carry any sail upon it.  Our carpenters, on a strict examination of this mast, found it so very rotten and decayed that they judged it necessary to cut it down as low as it appeared to have been injured, and by this it was reduced to nothing but a stump, which served only as a step to the topmast.  These accidents augmented our delay and occasioned us great anxiety about our future security, for on our leaving the coast of Mexico the scurvy had begun to make its appearance again amongst our people, though from our departure from Juan Fernandez we had till then enjoyed a most uninterrupted state of health.  We too well knew the effects of this disease from our former fatal experience to suppose that anything but a speedy passage could secure the greater part of our crew from perishing by it, and as, after being seven weeks at sea, there did not appear any reasons that could persuade us we were nearer the trade wind than when we first set out, there was no ground for us to suppose but our passage would prove at least three times as long as we at first expected, and consequently we had the melancholy prospect either of dying by the scurvy or perishing with the ship for want of hands to navigate her.

SLOW PROGRESS.

When we reached the trade wind, and it settled between the north and the east, yet it seldom blew with so much strength but the Centurion might have carried all her small sails abroad with the greatest safety, so that now, had we been a single ship, we might have run down our longitude apace, and have reached the Ladrones soon enough to have recovered great numbers of our men who afterwards perished.  But the Gloucester, by the loss of her mainmast, sailed so very heavily that we had seldom any more than our topsails set, and yet were frequently obliged to lie to for her, and I conceive that in the whole we lost little less than a month by our attendance upon her, in consequence of the various mischances she encountered.  In all this run it was remarkable that we were rarely many days together without seeing great numbers of birds, which is a proof that there are many islands, or at least rocks, scattered all along at no very considerable distance from our track.  Some indeed there are marked in Spanish charts, but the frequency of the birds seems to evince that there are many more than have been hitherto discovered, for the greatest part of the birds, we observed, were such as are known to roost on shore, and the manner of their appearance sufficiently made out that they came from some distant haunt every morning, and returned thither again in the evening, for we never saw them early or late, and the hour of their arrival and departure gradually varied, which we supposed was occasioned by our running nearer their haunts or getting farther from them.