a little higher up the creek where we were, we found the water fresh
when the tide was out, which flows but a little way up; so we filled
our jars, and feasted on the hare we had killed, and prepared to go on
our way, having seen no footsteps of any human creature in that part of
the country.

As I had been one voyage to this coast before, I knew very well that the
islands of the Canaries, and the Cape de Verd islands also, lay not far
off from the coast. But as I had no instruments to take an observation
to know what latitude we were in, and not exactly knowing, or at least
remembering what latitude they were in, and knew not where to look for
them, or when to stand off to sea towards them; otherwise I might now
easily have found some of these islands. But my hope was, that if I
stood along this coast till I came to that part where the English
traded, I should find some of their vessels upon their usual design of
trade, that would relieve and take us in.

By the best of my calculation, that place where I now was, must be that
country, which, lying between the emperor of Morocco's dominions and the
Negroes, lies waste, and uninhabited, except by wild beasts; the Negroes
having abandoned it, and gone farther south for fear of the Moors; and
the Moors not thinking it worth inhabiting, by reason of its barrenness;
and indeed both forsaking it because of the prodigious numbers of
tigers, lions, and leopards, and other furious creatures which harbour
there; so that the Moors use it for their hunting only, where they go
like an army, two or three thousand men at a time; and indeed for near
an hundred miles together upon this coast, we saw nothing but a waste,
uninhabited country by day, and heard nothing but howlings and roaring
of wild beasts by night.