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Att the end of some of which, in time there will be gathered together, a knotte of matter which by litle and litle, will take the forme of a head; and you will ere long beginne to discerne eyes and a beake in it.
The same second day at night Captaine Stafford, with the Pinnesse, departed from our fleets, riding at Santa Cruz, to an Island, called Beake, lying neere S. Iohn, being so directed by Ferdinando, who assured him he should there find great plenty of sheepe.
"Their boats whereof we brought one to Bristoll, were in proportion like a wherrie of the river of Thames, seventeene foot long and foure foot broad, made of the barke of a birch tree, farre exceeding in bignesse those of England: it was sowed together with strong and tough oziers or twigs, and the seames covered over with rozen or turpentine little inferiour in sweetnesse to frankincense, as we made triall by burning a little thereof on the coales at sundry times after our comming home: it was also open like a wherrie, and sharpe at both ends, saving that the beake was a little bending roundly upward.
Gerard then continues to point out how, when the shell is perfectly formed, it "gapeth open, and the first thing that appeereth is the foresaid lace or string" the substance described by Gerard as contained within the shell "next come the legs of the Birde hanging out; and as it groweth greater, it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length it is all come forth, and hangeth only by the bill; in short space after it commeth to full maturitie, and falleth into the sea, where it gathereth feathers, and groweth to a foule, bigger than a Mallard, and lesser than a Goose, having blacke legs and bill or beake, and feathers blacke and white ... which the people of Lancashire call by no other name than a tree Goose."
And comming on land we found the tracking of some barefooted people which were departed thence not long before: for we sawe their fire still burning, but people we sawe none, nor any other living creature, saue a certaine kind of foule called oxe birds, which are a gray kind of Sea-foule, like a Snite in colour, but not in beake.
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