This ceremony over they viewed the land about them. While sandy and low by the waterside it soon rose into fair little hills. Close by the water’s edge were masses of grape vines. So “full of grapes” indeed was the place that “the very beating and surging of the Sea overflowed them.” There was such plenty “as well there as in all places else, both on the sand and on the greene soile on the hils, as in the plaines, as well as every little shrubb, as also climing towardes the tops of high Cedars,” that the narrator thought that in all the world the “like abundance” was not to be found: and he was a much-travelled man. Ascending one of the little hills they saw the place to be an island and not the main. Below them they beheld valleys “replenished with goodly Cedar trees.” Upon discharging their “harquebuz-shot” such a flock of cranes, mostly white ones, rose that their cry “redoubled by many echoes” was “as if an armie of men had showted together.” The island was seen to be rich in “many goodly woodes full of Deere, Conies, Hares, and Fowle, even in the middest of Summer in incredible abundance.” The woods contained “the highest and reddest Cedars of the world ... Pynes, Cypres, Sarsaphras, the Lentisk, or the tree that beareth the Masticke, the tree that beareth the vine of blacke Sinamon, of which Master Winter [of Drake’s fleet that entered the Pacific] brought from the straights of Magellan, and many other of excellent smel and qualitie.”
They remained at this island for two whole days before they had sight of any natives. On the third day when on ship-board they espied a canoe paddling toward them with three Indians in it. When it had come within “foure harquebuz-shot” of their ships it put into the point of land nearest to them. Two of its three occupants went up into the island, while the other walked to and fro along the point, viewing the ships with evident interest. Then the two captains and a few others rowed to the shore to meet him. As they approached he made no shew of “feare or doubt.” After he had spoken with them “of many things” which they could not understand, he was invited by gestures to visit the ships, which he showed was quite to his liking. On board he was entertained with a taste of their wine and their bread, which he “liked very much,” and was given a shirt, a hat, and some other things. When he had viewed both barks to his satisfaction, he was sent back ashore. Again taking his canoe which he had left in a creek he fell a-fishing not far from the ships, and in less than half an hour he had laden his boat “as deepe as it could swimme.” Then returning to the point of land nearest the ships he here divided his fish into two parts, pointing one part to one of the ships and one to the other. And so, “as much as he might,” requiting the benefits he had received from the Englishmen, he departed from their sight.