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With these and the like sights, but always making our supplications to God for good weather and the preservation of our ship, we came at length to the south cape of Africa, the ever famous Cape of Good Hope, so much desired yet feared of all men: But we there found no tempest, only immense waves, where our pilot was guilty of an oversight; for, whereas commonly all navigators do never come within sight of land, but, contenting themselves with signs and finding the bottom, go their course safe and sure, he, thinking to have the winds at will, shot nigh the land; when the wind, changing into the south, with the assistance of the mountainous waves, rolled us so near the land that we were in less than 14 fathoms, only six miles from Capo das Agulias, and there we looked to be utterly lost.
To come more neere vnto particulars, I haue here set downe the very originals and infancie of our trades to the Canarian Ilands, to the kingdomes of Barbarie, to the mightie riuers of Senega and Gambia, to those of Madrabumba, and Sierra Leona, and the Isles of Cape Verde, with twelue sundry voyages to the sultry kingdomes of Guinea and Benin, to the Ile of San Thome, with a late and true report of the weake estate of the Portugales in Angola, as also the whole course of the Portugale Caracks from Lisbon to the barre of Goa in India, with the disposition and qualitie of the climate neere and vnder the Equinoctiall line, the sundry infallible markes and tokens of approaching vnto, and doubling of The Cape of good Hope, the great variation of the compasse for three or foure pointes towards the East between the Meridian of S. Michael one of the Islands of the Azores, and the aforesaid Cape, with the returne of the needle againe due North at the Cape Das Agulias, and that place being passed outward bound, the swaruing backe againe thereof towards the West, proportionally as it did before, the two wayes, the one within and the other without the Isle of S. Laurence, the dangers of priuie rockes and quicksands, the running seas, and the perils thereof, with the certaine and vndoubted signes of land.
Again, having passed a little beyond the cape called das Agulias, or of the Needles, it returneth again towards the north; and when it hath attained that, it swerveth again toward the west proportionally, as it did before eastwards.
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