N.[78] On The 16th October They Came To Bayla Bay, In A Very Fertile Land, At Which Place They Procured Abundance Of All Kinds Of Necessaries For Their Ships, By Pretending To Be Spaniards.

The Spaniards, who are lords here, make the Indians pay an annual capitation tax, to the value of ten single rials for every one above twenty years of age.

The natives of these islands are mostly naked, having their skins marked with figures so deeply impressed, [tatooed] that they never wear out. Being discovered to be Dutch, but not till they had gained their ends, they sailed for the Straits of Manilla, all the coasts near which appeared waste, barren, and rocky. Here a sudden squall of wind from the S.E. carried away some of their masts and sails, being more furious than any they had hitherto experienced during the voyage. The 23d some of the people went ashore, where they eat palmitoes and drank water so greedily, that they were afterwards seized with the dysentery. The 24th they entered the straits, sailing past an island in the middle, and came in the evening past the island of Capul, seven miles within the straits, near which they found whirlpools, where the sea was of an unfathomable depth, so far as they could discover.

[Footnote 78: This surely is an error for 18 deg., Guam being in lat. 18 deg. 20' N. yet even here, the fact of meeting ice so far within the tropic is sufficiently singular.

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