rees; bowsing and hauling them together, with great pulleys and
hawsers, until they were enclosed to the water; and then letting others
fall upon them, until they had raised with trees and boughs thirty feet
in height round about, leaving only one gate to issue at, near the
water side; which every night, that we might sleep in more safety and
security, was shut up, with a great tree drawn athwart it.

The whole plot was built in pentagonal form, to wit, of five equal
sides and angles, of which angles two were toward the sea, and that side
between them was left open, for the easy launching of our pinnaces: the
other four equal sides were wholly, excepting the gate before mentioned,
firmly closed up.

Without, instead of a trench, the ground was rid [laid bare] for fifty
feet space, round about. The rest was very thick with trees, of which
many were of those kinds which are never without green leaves, till they
are dead at the root: excepting only one kind of tree amongst them,
much like to our Ash, which when the sun cometh right over them, causing
great rains, suddenly casteth all its leaves, viz., within three days,
and yet within six days after becomes all green again. The leaves of
the other trees do also in part fall away, but so as the trees continue
still green notwithstanding: being of a marvellous height, and supported
as it were with five or six natural buttresses growing out of their
bodies so far, that three men may so be hidden in each of them, that
they which shall stand in the very next buttress shall not be able to
see them. One of them specially was marked to have had seven of those
stays or buttresses, for the supporting of his greatness and height,
which being measured with a line close by the bark and near to the
ground, as it was indented or extant, was found to be above thirty-nine
yards about. The wood of those trees is as heavy or heavier than Brazil
or _Lignum vitae_; and is in colour white.

The next day after we had arrived (13th July), there came also into
that bay, an English bark of the Isle of Wight, of Sir EDWARD HORSEY'S;
wherein JAMES RANSE was Captain and JOHN OVERY, Master, with thirty men:
of which, some had been with our Captain in the same place, the year
before. They brought in with them a Spanish caravel of Seville, which
he had taken the day before, athwart of that place; being a Caravel of
_Adviso_ [Despatch boat] bound for Nombre de Dios; and also one
shallop with oars, which