to deliver us from this danger; we cannot escape it, if he do not take pity on us.  At these words he ordered the sails to be changed; but all the ropes broke, and the ship, without any possibility of helping it, was carried by the current to the foot of an inaccessible mountain, where she was run ashore, and broken to pieces, yet so as we saved our lives, our provisions, and the best of our goods.  This being over, the captain says to us, God has now done what he pleased; we may every man dig our grave here, and bid the world adieu; for we are all in so fatal a place, that none shipwrecked here did ever return to their homes again.  His discourse afflicted us mortally, and we embraced one another with tears in our eyes, bewailing our deplorable lot.

The mountain at the foot of which we were cast, was the coast of a very long and large island.  This coast was covered over with wrecks:  and, by the vast number of men’s bones we saw every where, and which filled us with horror, we concluded that abundance of people had died there.  It is also incredible to tell what a quantity of goods and riches we found cast ashore there.  All those objects served only to augment our grief.  While, in all other places, rivers run from their channels into the sea, here a great river of fresh water runs out of the sea into a dark cave, whose entrance is very high and large.  What is most remarkable in this place is, that the stones of the mountain are of crystal, rubies, or other precious stones.  Here also is a sort of fountain of pitch or bitumen that runs into the sea, which the fishes swallow, and then vomit up again turned into ambergris; this the waves throw upon the beach in great quantities.  Here grow also trees, most of which are wood of aloes, equal to those of Comari.

To finish the description of this place, which may well be called the gulph, as nothing ever returns from it, it is not possible for ships to get off from it, when once they come within ft certain distance of it.  If they be driven thither by a wind from the sea, the wind and the current ruin them; and if they come into it when a land wind blows, which might seem to favour their getting out again, the height of the mountain stops the wind, and occasions a calm, so that the force of the current drives them ashore, where they are broken in pieces, as ours was; and what completes the misfortune, there is no possibility of getting to the top of the mountain, or getting out in any manner of way.  We continued upon the shore like men out of their senses, and expected death every day.  At first we divided our provisions as equally as we could, so that every one lived a longer or shorter time, according to his temperance, and the use he made of his provisions.  Those who died first were interred by the rest; and for my part, I paid the last duty to all my companions.  Nor need you wonder at this; for, besides that I husbanded the provision that fell to my share better than they, I had provisions