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 numbers 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 together upon this coast, we saw nothing but a waste, uninhabited country by day, and heard nothing but howlings and roaring of wild beasts by night.

Once or twice, in the day time, I thought I saw the Pico of Teneriffe, being the top of the mountain Teneriffe in the Canaries, and had a great mind to venture out, in hopes of reaching thither; but having tried twice, I was forced in again by contrary winds; the sea also going too high for my little vessel; so I resolved to pursue my first design, and keep along the shore.

Several times I was obliged to land for fresh water, after we had left this place; and once, in particular, being early in the morning, we came to an anchor under a little point of land which was pretty high; and the tide beginning to flow, we lay still, to go farther in. Xury, whose eyes were more about him than, it seems, mine were, calls softly to me, and tells me, that we had best go farther off the shore; for, says he, Look, yonder lies a dreadful monster on the side of that hillock, fast asleep. I looked where he pointed, and saw a dreadful monster indeed, for it was a terrible great lion, that lay on the side of the shore, under the shade of a piece of the hill, that hung, as it were, over him. Xury,

says I, you shall go on shore and kill him. Xury looked frightened, and said, Me kill! he eat me at one mouth one mouthful he meant. However, I said no more to the boy, but bade him be still; and I took our biggest gun, which was almost musquet bore, and loaded it with a good charge of powder, and with two slugs, and laid it down; then I loaded another gun with two bullets; and a third, for we had three pieces, I loaded with five smaller bullets. I took the best aim I could with the first piece, to have shot him in the head; but he lay so, with his leg raised a little above his nose, that the slugs hit his leg about the knee, and broke the bone: he started up, growling at first, but finding his leg broke, fell down again, and then got up upon three legs, and gave the most hideous roar that ever I heard. I was a little surprised that I had not hit him on the head; however, I took up the second piece immediately, and though he began to move off, fired again, and shot him in the head, and had the pleasure to see him drop, and make but little noise, but lie struggling for life. Then Xury took heart, and would have me let him go on shore. Well, go, said I: so the boy jumped into the water, and taking a little gun in one hand, swam to shore with the other hand, and coming close to the creature, put the muzzle of the piece to his ear, and shot him in the head again, which dispatched him quite.

This was game, indeed, to us, but it was no food; and I was very sorry to lose three charges of powder and shot upon a creature that was good for nothing to us. However, Xury said he would have some of him; so he comes on board, and asked me to give him the hatchet: For what, Xury? said I. Me cut off his head, said he. However, Xury could not cut off his head; but he cut off a foot, and

brought it with him, and it was a monstrous great one. I bethought myself, however, that perhaps the skin of him might, one way or other, be of some value to us; and I resolved to take off his skin, if I could. So Xury and I went to work with him: but Xury was much the better workman at it, for I knew very ill how to do it. Indeed, it took us both up the whole day; but at last we got off the hide of him, and spreading it on the top of our cabin, the sun effectually dried it in two days' time, and it afterwards served me to lie upon.

After this stop, we made on to the southward continually, for ten or twelve days, living very sparingly on our provisions, which began to abate very much, and going no oftener into the shore than we were obliged to for fresh water. My design in this, was to make the river Gambia, or Senegal; that is to say, any where about the Cape de Verd, where I was in hopes to meet with some European ship; and if I did not, I knew not what course I had to take, but to seek for the islands, or perish among the Negroes. I knew that all the ships from Europe, which sailed either to the coast of Guinea, or to Brazil, or to the East Indies, made this cape, or those islands: and, in a word, I put the whole of my fortune upon this single point, either that I must meet with some ship, or must perish.

When I had pursued this resolution about ten days longer, as I have said, I began to see that the land was inhabited; and in two or three places, as we sailed by, we saw people stand upon the shore to look at us: we could also perceive they were quite black, and stark naked. I was once inclined to have gone on shore to them; but Xury was my better counsellor, and said to me, No go, no go. How

ever, I hauled in nearer the shore, that I might talk to them; and I found they ran along the shore by

me a good way. I observed they had no weapons in their hands, except one, who had a long, slender stick, which Xury said was a lance, and that they would throw them a great way with good aim; so I kept at a distance, but talked to them by signs, as well as I could, and particularly made signs for something to eat. They beckoned to me to stop my boat, and they would fetch me some meat: upon this, I lowered the top of my sail, and lay by, and two of them ran up into the country; and in less than half an hour came back, and brought with them two pieces of dry flesh and some corn, such as is the produce of their country; but we neither knew what the one or the other was; however, we were willing to accept it. But how to come at it was our next dispute, for I was not for venturing on shore to them, and they were as much afraid of us: but they took a safe way for us all, for they brought it to the shore, and laid it down, and went and stood a great way off till we fetched it on board, and then came close to us again.

We made signs of thanks to them, for we had nothing to make them amends: but an opportunity offered that very instant to oblige them wonderfully; for while we were lying by the shore, came two mighty creatures, one pursuing the other (as we took it) with great fury, from the mountains towards the sea; whether it was the male pursuing the female, or whether they were in sport or in rage, we could not tell, any more than we could tell whether it was usual or strange; but I believe it was the latter, because, in the first place, those ravenous creatures seldom appear but in the night; and, in the second place, we found the people terribly frightened, especially the women. The man that had the lance, or dart, did not fly from them, but the rest did; however, as the two creatures ran directly into

the water, they did not seem to offer to fall upon any of the Negroes, but plunged themselves into the sea, and swam about, as if they had come for their diversion at last, one of them began to come nearer our boat than I at first expected; but I lay ready for him, for I had loaded my gun with all possible expedition, and bade Xury load both the others. As soon as he

came fairly within my reach, I fired, and shot him directly in the head: immediately he sunk down into the water, but rose instantly, and plunged up and down, as if he was struggling for life, and so indeed he was; he immediately made to the shore, but between the wound, which was his mortal hurt, and the strangling of the water, he died just before he reached the shore.

It is impossible to express the astonishment of these poor creatures, at the noise and fire of my gun; some of them were even ready to die for fear, and fell down as dead with the very terror; but when they saw the creature dead, and sunk in the water, and that I made signs to them to come to the shore, they took heart and came to the shore, and began to search for the creature. I found him by his blood staining the water; and by the help of a rope, which I slung round him, and gave the Negroes to haul, they dragged him on shore, and found that it was a most curious leopard, spotted, and fine to an admirable degree; and the Negroes held up their hands with admiration, to think what it was I had killed him with.

The other creature, frightened with the flash of fire and the noise of the gun, swam on shore, and ran up directly to the mountains from whence they came; nor could I, at that distance, know what it was. I found quickly the Negroes were for eating the flesh of this creature, so I was willing to have them take it as a favour from me; which, when I