The Sailors Sometimes Used This Oil To Fry Their Fish, For
Want Of Butter, And Found It Sufficiently Agreeable.
The men who worked
ashore in repairing our rigging, eat the young seals, which they
preferred to our ship's provisions, alleging that it was as good as
English lamb.
We made all the haste we could to get every thing on
board, as we learnt at the Canaries that five stout French privateers
were coming in company into the South Sea.
This island of Juan Fernandez is about fifteen English miles in length
from E. to W. and five miles where broadest, but averaging little more
than two miles in breadth, and is mostly composed of high rugged land. I
know of nothing in its neighbourhood which may endanger a ship, except
what is distinctly visible. We anchored in the great bay, [La Baia or
Cumberland harbour] on the N.E. side, about a mile from the bottom of
the bay, our best bower being dropt in forty fathoms, and the stream
anchor carried in with the shore, where it was laid in about thirty
fathoms. We here had plenty of several sorts of fish, as silver-fish,
snappers, bonitoes, cavallos, pollocks, old wives, and cray-fish of
great size. The wind blows here generally off the shore, sometimes in
heavy squalls, but for the most part calm, and where we were moored the
water was very smooth, owing to the winding of the shore. Mr Selkirk
told us it had never blown towards the land above four hours, all the
time he had been there.
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