roper, and so waded on shore, carrying nothing but our arms
and two jars for water.

I did not care to go out of sight of the boat, fearing the coming of
canoes with savages down the river; but the boy seeing a low place about
a mile up the country, rambled to it, and by-and-by I saw him come
running towards me. I thought he was pursued by some savage, or frighted
with some wild beast, and I ran forward towards him to help him; but when
I came nearer to him I saw something hanging over his shoulders, which
was a creature that he had shot, like a hare, but different in colour,
and longer legs; however, we were very glad of it, and it was very good
meat; but the great joy that poor Xury came with, was to tell me he had
found good water and seen no wild mans.

But we found afterwards that we need not take such pains for water, for a
little higher up the creek where we were we found the water fresh when
the tide was out, which flowed but a little way up; so we filled our
jars, and feasted on the hare he had killed, and prepared to go on our
way, having seen no footsteps of any human creature in that part of the
country.

As I had been one voyage to this coast before, I knew very well that the
islands of the Canaries, and the Cape de Verde Islands also, lay not far
off from the coast. But as I had no instruments to take an observation
to know what latitude we were in, and not exactly knowing, or at least
remembering, what latitude they were in, I knew not where to look for
them, or when to stand off to sea towards them; otherwise I might now
easily have found some of these islands. But my hope was, that if I
stood along this coast till I came to that part where the English traded,
I should find some of their vessels upon their usual design of trade,
that would relieve and take us in.

By the best of my calculation, that place where I now was must be that
country which, lying between the Emperor of Morocco's dominions and the
negroes, lies waste and uninhabited, except by wild beasts; the negroes
having abandoned it and gone farther south for fear of the Moors, and the
Moors not thinking it worth inhabiting by reason of its barrenness; and
indeed, both forsaking it because of the prodigious number of tigers,
lions, leopards, and other furious creatures which harbour there; so that
the Moors use it for their hunting only, where they go like an army, two
or three thousand men at a time; and indeed for near a hundred miles