* *

After most humble commendations to you and my mother, and craving your
daily blessing, these are to certify you of my being alive, according to
your will and my duty. I wrote you that I had taken my journey from
Italy to Portugal, which letter I think came to your hands, in which
hope I have the less need to tell you the cause of my departing, which
in one word I may express, by naming _obedience_. I came to Lisbon
towards the end of March, eight days before the departure of the ships,
so late that, if they had not been detained about some important
affairs, they had been gone before our arrival; insomuch that others
were appointed to go in our stead, that the kings intention and ours
might not be frustrated. But on our sudden arrival, these others did not
go, and we went as originally intended.

The 4th of April, five ships departed for Goa, in which, besides
mariners and soldiers, there were a great number of children, who bear
the sea much better than men, as also do many women. I need not tell
you, as you may easily imagine the solemnity of setting out, with sound
of trumpets and discharges of cannon, as they go forth in a warlike
manner. The 10th of the same month we came in sight of Porto Sancto near
Madeira, where an English ship set upon ours, now entirely alone, and
fired several shots which did us no harm: But when our ship had run out
her largest ordnance, the English ship made away from us. This English
ship was large and handsome, and I was sorry to see her so ill
occupied, as she went roving about the seas, and we met her again at the
Canaries, where we arrived on the 13th of the same month of April, and
had good opportunity to wonder at the high peaked mountain in the island
of Teneriffe, as we beat about between that island and Grand Canary for
four days with contrary winds, and indeed had such evil weather till the
14th of May, that we despaired of being able to double the Cape of Good
Hope that year. Yet, taking our course between Guinea and the Cape de
Verd islands, without seeing any land at all, we arrived at the coast of
Guinea, as the Portuguese call that part of the western coast of Africa
in the torrid zone, from the lat. of 6 deg. N. to the equinoctial; in which
parts they suffer so much by extreme heats and want of wind, that they
think themselves happy when past it. Sometimes the ships stand quite
still and becalmed for many days, and sometimes they go on, but in such
a m