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 large for the purpose of navigating these narrow waters, and as the stores of all his ships were nearly exhausted, many of them having been entirely destroyed in the tropics, whilst his own health was in a very precarious state, he felt compelled to shorten his voyage, and hasten for Hispaniola.

Discovering on his way the islands of Tobago and Granada, as also the islands of Margarita and Cubagua, afterwards famous for their pearl fisheries, he made the island of Hispaniola on the 19th August, about fifty leagues to the westward of the river Osema, the place of his destination; and having, on the following morning, anchored under the little island of Beata, he sent a boat on shore to procure an Indian messenger, to take a letter to his brother Bartholomew, who, during his absence, had formed a new settlement at Dominica. On his arrival he found that between fresh wars with the natives, and seditions among the colonists combined with their own indolence, everything had again been thrown into a state of confusion and poverty, saved only from utter annihilation by the tact and ability of Bartholomew. Too idle to labour, and destitute of those resources prevalent at home as a means of killing time, the colonists had quarrelled among themselves, mutinied against their rulers, wasted their time in alternate riot and despondency, while their evil passions, which had inflicted great calamities on the once pure and innocent natives, had likewise ensured a merited return of suffering to themselves. Confirming, by proclamation, the measures of his brother, and denouncing the leaders of the conspiracies which had been the cause of so