again, and saw many great smokes near the shore; and having fair weather
and moderate breezes, I steered in towards it. At four in the afternoon
I anchored in eight fathom water, clear sand, about three leagues and a
half from the shore. I presently sent my boat to sound nearer in, and
they found ten fathom about a mile farther in, and from thence still
farther in the water decreased gradually to nine, eight, seven, and at
two miles distance to six fathom. This evening we saw an eclipse of the
moon, but it was abating before the moon appeared to us; for the horizon
was very hazy, so that we could not see the moon till she had been half
an hour above the horizon; and at two hours twenty-two minutes after
sunset, by the reckoning of our glasses, the eclipse was quite gone,
which was not of many digits. The moon's centre was then 33 degrees 40
minutes high.

The 31st of August, betimes in the morning, I went ashore with ten or
eleven men to search for water. We went armed with muskets and cutlasses
for our defence, expecting to see people there, and carried also shovels
and pickaxes to dig wells. When we came near the shore we saw three
tall, black, naked men on the sandy bay ahead of us; but as we rowed in,
they went away. When we were landed, I sent the boat with two men in her
to lie a little from the shore at an anchor, to prevent being seized;
while the rest of us went after the three black men, who were now got on
the top of a small hill about a quarter of a mile from us, with eight or
nine men more in their company. They, seeing us coming, ran away. When
we came on the top of the hill where they first stood, we saw a plain
savannah, about half a mile from us, farther in from the sea. There were
several things like hay-cocks standing in the savannah, which at a
distance we thought were houses, looking just like the Hottentots' houses
at the Cape of Good Hope: but we found them to be so many rocks. We
searched about these for water, but could find none, nor any houses, nor