CAPTAIN DRAKE

If you fortune to come to this Port, make haste away!  For the Spaniards which you had with you here, the last year, have bewrayed this place, and taken away all that you left here.

I depart from hence, this present 7th of July, 1572.

Your very loving friend, John Garret.

The smoke which we saw, was occasioned by a fire, which the said Garret and his company had made, before their departure, in a very great tree, not far from this which had the lead nailed on it, which had continued burning at least five days before our arrival.

This advertisement notwithstanding, our Captain meant not to depart before he had built his pinnaces; which were yet aboard in pieces:  for which purpose he knew this port to be a most convenient place.

And therefore as soon as we had moored our ships, our Captain commanded his pinnaces to be brought ashore for the carpenters to set up; himself employing all his other company in fortifying a place (which he had chosen out, as a most fit plot) of three-quarters of an acre of ground, to make some strength or safety for the present, as sufficiently as the means he had would afford.  Which was performed by felling of great trees; bowsing and hauling them together, with great pulleys and hawsers, until they were enclosed to the water; and then letting others fall upon them, until they had raised with trees and boughs thirty feet in height round about, leaving only one gate to issue at, near the water side; which every night, that we might sleep in more safety and security, was shut up, with a great tree drawn athwart it.

The whole plot was built in pentagonal form, to wit, of five equal sides and angles, of which angles two were toward the sea, and that side between them was left open, for the easy launching of our pinnaces:  the other four equal sides were wholly, excepting the gate before mentioned, firmly closed up.

Without, instead of a trench, the ground was rid [laid bare] for fifty feet space, round about.  The rest was very thick with trees, of which many were of those kinds which are never without green leaves, till they are dead at the root:  excepting only one kind of tree amongst them, much like to our Ash, which when the sun cometh right over them, causing great rains, suddenly casteth all its leaves, viz., within three days, and yet within six days after becomes all green again.  The leaves of the other trees do also in part fall away, but so as the trees continue still green notwithstanding:  being of a marvellous height, and supported as it were with five or six natural buttresses growing out of their bodies so far, that three men may so be hidden in each of them, that they which shall stand in the very next buttress shall not be able to see them.  One of them specially was marked to have had seven of those stays or buttresses, for the supporting of his greatness and height, which being measured with a line close by the bark and near to the ground, as it was indented or extant, was found to be above thirty-nine yards about.  The wood of those trees is as heavy or heavier than Brazil or Lignum vitae; and is in colour white.