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Beyond that he came to the Frailes islands, named Roques, Aruba, and Curaçoa, and other small islands, along the coast of the main land, and to the point of land named Cabo de Vela, having discovered 200 leagues of coast. He thence crossed over the Caribbean Sea, directly north for Hispaniola, passing by the island Beata.
On the western declivity of the hill of Cabo Blanco, the gneiss is covered with a formation of sandstone, or conglomerate, extremely recent. This sandstone combines angular fragments of gneiss, quartz, and chlorite, magnetical sand, madrepores, and petrified bivalve shells. Is this formation of the same date as that of Punta Araya and Cumana?
At Uirapiranga, a small island behind the Ilha das oncas, we had to stop a short time to embark several pipes of cashaca at a sugar estate. The cabo took the montaria and two men; the pipes were rolled into the water and floated to the canoe, the men passing cables round and towing them through a rough sea.
But, from the baldness of the narrative, there is great difficulty in tracing out this voyage. These are now called Bananas islands, in lat. 8° N. E. Perhaps the Camaranca. Probably that now called Tassa Point, or Cabo de S. Anna. This account seems again to refer to the river Camaranca and Tassa Point; otherwise called Cape St Ann; yet this cape is brought in immediately afterwards.
Thus by account, of 200 ships which were certainly known to have sailed out of New Spain, San Domingo, Havannah, Cabo Verde, Brazil, Guinea, &c. in the year 1589, for Spain and Portugal, not above 14 or 15 of them arrived safe, all the rest having either been foundered, cast away, or taken.
In this it is easy to recognize the high peak already spoken of as the Alto de Juan Daune. Arrived off this, he saw another cape, distant fifteen leagues, and still farther another five leagues beyond it, which he called Cabo de Campana.
At about 600 yards from where the Hormigueros road leaves the main road the latter crosses the Rio Grande on a wooden bridge. Just beyond this bridge the road to Cabo Rojo branches off to the south.
In these latitudes the temperature of the sea was from twenty-three to twenty-four degrees, consequently from 1.5 to two degrees lower than in the open ocean, beyond the edge of the bank. The Cabo de tres Puntas is, according to my observations, in 65 degrees 4 minutes 5 seconds longitude. It seemed to us the more elevated, as the clouds concealed the view of its indented top.
I can say nothing here to the manner of our voyage, for, as I said, I kept no journal; but this I can give an account of, that having been once as high as the Cape of Good Hope, as we call it, or Cabo de Bona Speranza, as they call it, we were driven back again by a violent storm from the W.S.W., which held us six days and nights a great way to the eastward, and after that, standing afore the wind for several days more, we at last came to an anchor on the coast of Madagascar.
He had on board a wire guitar or viola, as it is here called; and in the bright moonlight nights, as we lay at anchor hour after hour waiting for the tide, he enlivened us all with songs and music. He was on the best of terms with the cabo, both sleeping in the same hammock slung between the masts. I passed the nights wrapped in an old sail outside the roof of the cabin.