OFF THE ORINOCO. 389

them, Emade his commander sign a writing obliging himself to
go, as soon as he came to Bristol, to one Mr. Rogers, a merchant
there, to whom the youth said he was related, and to deliver a letter
which T wrote to him, and all the goods he had belonging to the
deceased widow : which, [ suppose, was not done. for I could never
learn that the ship came to Bristol, but was, as is most probable,
lost at sea, being in so disabled a condition and so far from any
land, that Tam of opinion the first storm she met with afterwards
she might founder in the sea; for she was leaky, and had damage
in her hold when we met with her.

[ was now in the latitude of 19° 82’, and had hitherto
had a tolerable voyage as to weather, though at first the winds
had been contrary. I shall trouble nobody with the little
incidents of wind, weather, currents, Ge., on the rest of our voyage ;
but shortening my story for the sake of what is to follow, shall
observe that I came to my old habitation, the island, on the 10th
of April 1695. It was with no small difficulty that I found the
place; for as I came to it and went from it before on the south
and east side of the island, as coming from the Brazils, so now
coming in between the main and the island, and having no chart
for the coast nor any landmark, I did not know it when I saw it,
or know whether I saw it or no.

We beat about a great while, and went on shore on several
islands in the mouth of the great river Orinoco, but none for my
purpose. Only this I learned by my coasting the shore, that I was
under one great mistake before, namely, that the continent which
I thought I saw from the island I lived in was really no continent,
but a long island, or rather a ridge of islands, reaching from one
to the other side of the extended mouth of that great river; and
that the savages who came to my island were not properly those
which we call Caribbees, but islanders, and other barbarians of
the same kind, who inhabited something nearer to our side than
the rest.

In short, I visited several of these islands to no purpose. Some
I found were inhabited, and some were not. On one of them I
found some Spaniards, and thought they had lived there; but,
speaking with them, I found they had a sloop lay in a small creek