ine, and some with another;
some claiming such a wreck, and some such-and-such others; where they
alleged they were assured there were great quantities of money; and
strange unprecedented ways were used by them to come at it: some, I say,
with one kind of engine, and some another; and though we thought several
of them very strange impracticable methods, yet I was assured by the
country people that they had done wonders with them under water, and that
some of them had taken up things of great weight and in a great depth of
water. Others had split open the wrecks they had found in a manner one
would have thought not possible to be done so far under water, and had
taken out things from the very holds of the ships. But we could not
learn that they had come at any pieces of eight, which was the thing they
seemed most to aim at and depend upon; at least, they had not found any
great quantity, as they said they expected.

However, we left them as busy as we found them, and far from being
discouraged; and if half the golden mountains, or silver mountains
either, which they promise themselves should appear, they will be very
well paid for their labour.

From the tops of the hills on this extremity of the land you may see out
into that they call the Chops of the Channel, which, as it is the
greatest inlet of commerce, and the most frequented by merchant-ships of
any place in the world, so one seldom looks out to seaward but something
new presents--that is to say, of ships passing or repassing, either on
the great or lesser Channel.

Upon a former accidental journey into this part of the country, during
the war with France, it was with a mixture of pleasure and horror that we
saw from the hills at the Lizard, which is the southern-most point of
this land, an obstinate fight between three French men-of-war and two
English, with a privateer and three merchant-ships in their company. The
English had the misfortune, not only to be fewer ships of war in number,
but of less force; so that while the two biggest French ships engaged the
English, the third in the meantime took the two merchant-ships and went
off with them. As to the picaroon or privateer, she was able to do
little in the matter, not daring to come so near the men-of-war as to
take a broadside, which her thin sides would not have been able to bear,
but would have sent her to the bottom at once; so that the English men-of-
war had no assistance from her, nor could she