Page:The principal navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation 15.djvu/167

 tacked about in the pinnesses top, had sight of them, and tooke them vp: they in the boats, being to the number of one and twenty, hauing sight of the ships, and seeing them tacking about; whereas before at the first sight of them they did greatly reioyce, were now in a greater perplexitie then euer they were: for by this they thought themselues vtterly forsaken, whereas before they were in some hope to haue found them. Truly God wrought maruellously for them, for they themselues hauing no victuals but water, and being sore oppressed with hunger, were not of opinion to bestow any further time in seeking the shippes then that present noone time: so that if they had not at that instant espied them, they had gone to the shore to haue made prouision for victuals, and with such things as they could haue gotten, either to haue gone for that part of Florida where the French men were planted (which would haue bene very hard for them to haue done, because they wanted victuals to bring them thither, being an hundred and twenty leagues off) or els to haue remained amongst the Floridians; at whose hands they were put in comfort by a French man, who was with them, that had remained in Florida at the first finding thereof, a whole yeere together, to receiue victuals snfficient, and gentle entertainment, if need were, for a yeere or two, vntill which time God might haue prouided for them. But how contrary this would haue fallen out to their expectations, it is hard to iudge, seeing those people of the cape of Florida are of more sauage and fierce nature, and more valiant than any of the rest; which the Spanyards well prooued, who being fiue hundred men, who intended there to land, returned few or none of them, but were inforced to forsake the same: and of their cruelty mention is made in the booke of the Decades, of a frier, who taking vpon him to persuade the people to subiection, was by them taken, and his skin cruelly pulled ouer his eares, and his flesh eaten.

In these Islands they being a shore, found a dead man, dried in a maner whole, with other heads and bodies of men: so that these sorts of men are eaters of the flesh of men, aswel as the Canibals. But to returne to our purpose.

The fourteenth day the shippe and barks came to the Iesus, bringing them newes of the recouery of the men, which was not a little to the reioycing of the captaine, and the whole company: and so then altogether they kept on their way along the coast of Florida, and the fifteenth day came to an anker, and so from