Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIV SIR FRANCIS DRAKE'S CHANNEL AND "YAKABOO" WE awoke with the Virgins dead ahead. We were approaching them as Columbus had-- from the eastward. His course must have been more westerly than ours, but had he seen them first in the morning light as I did the effect must have been very nearly the same--a line of innumerable islets that seemed to bar our way. Herrera says, "Holding on their course, they saw many islands close together, that they seemed not to be numbered, the largest of which he called St. Ursula (Tortola) and the rest the Eleven Thousand Virgins, and then came up with another great one called Borriquen (the name the Indians gave it), but he gave it the name of St. John the Baptist, it is now called St. Juan de Puerto Rico." The largest island to windward he named Virgin Gorda--the Great Virgin. I spread my chart of the Virgins on the top of the cabin and tried to pick out the southern chain of islands that with Tortola and St. John's form Sir Francis Drake's Channel. On the chart were various notes in pencil which I had gathered on my way up the Lesser Antilles. On the lower end of Virgin Gorda, or Peniston as it is called, a corruption of Spanish Town, I should find the ruins of an old Spanish copper mine and here was that remarkable strewing of monoliths that, as I brought them close up with my glasses, looked for all the world like a ruined city, more so even than St. Pierre--and was called Fallen Jerusalem. Next in line came Ginger with a small dead sea on it, Cooper and Salt Islands where the wreck of the Rhone might be seen through the clear waters if there were not too much breeze. Directly on our course through the Salt Island passage was a little cay marked Dead Chest and called Duchess by the natives....
