hipwreck, were much dwelt upon by the writers of the time, and the
Bermudas became a sort of enchanted islands, or realms of the
imagination. For three nights, and three days that were as black as
the nights, the water logged Sea Venture was scarcely kept afloat by
bailing. We have a vivid picture of the stanch Somers sitting upon
the poop of the ship, where he sat three days and three nights
together, without much meat and little or no sleep, conning the ship
to keep her as upright as he could, until he happily descried land.
The ship went ashore and was wedged into the rocks so fast that it
held together till all were got ashore, and a good part of the goods
and provisions, and the tackling and iron of the ship necessary for
the building and furnishing of a new ship.

This good fortune and the subsequent prosperous life on the island
and final deliverance was due to the noble Somers, or Sommers, after
whom the Bermudas were long called "Sommers Isles," which was
gradually corrupted into "The Summer Isles." These islands of
Bermuda had ever been accounted an enchanted pile of rocks and a
desert inhabitation for devils, which the navigator and mariner
avoided as Scylla and Charybdis, or the devil himself. But this
shipwrecked company found it the most delightful country in the
world, the climate was enchanting, delicious fruits abounded, the
waters swarmed with fish, some of them big enough to nearly drag the
fishers into the sea, while whales could be heard spouting and nosing
about the rocks at night; birds fat and tame and willing to be eaten
covered all the bushes, and such droves of wild hogs covered the
island that the slaughter of them for months seemed not to diminish
their number. The friendly disposition of the birds seemed most to
impress the writer of the "True Declaration of Virginia." He
remembers how the ravens fed Elias in the brook Cedron; "so God
provided for our disconsolate people in the midst of the sea by
foules; but with an admirable difference; unto Elias the ravens
brought meat, unto our men the foules brought (themselves) for meate:
for when they whistled, or made any strange noyse, the foules would
come and sit on their shoulders, they would suffer themselves to be
taken and weighed by our men, who would make choice of the fairest
and fattest and let flie the leane and lightest, an accident [the
chronicler exclaims], I take it [and everybody will take it], that
cannot be paralleled by any His