violence, and we had let go our best bower anchor when we were near the
shore, in hopes it would have brought us up, and had not yet been able
to weigh it. We now rode in a very disagreeable situation with our small
bower, and that unfortunately came home again; we therefore got a hawser
out of the Tamar, who lay in the stream, and after weighing the small
bower, we got out by her assistance, and then dropped it again, most
ardently wishing for fair weather, that we might get the ship properly
moored.

The next day we sounded the harbour higher up, and found the ground
softer, and the water not so deep; yet the wind continued to blow so
hard that we could not venture to change our station. We had found a
small spring of water about half a mile inland, upon the north side of
the bay, but it had a brackish taste; I had also made another excursion
of several miles into the country, which I found barren and desolate,
in every direction, as far as the eye could reach. We had seen many
guanicoes at a distance, but we could not get near enough to have a shot
at them; we tracked 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