The sixteenth day after we parted from the Ladrones, being, by observation, in the latitude of 17° south of the line, one of our men cried, A sail! a sail! which put us into some fit of wonder, knowing nothing of a ship of any bulk could be met with in those seas; but our fit of wonder was soon turned to a fit of laughter, when one of our men from the foretop, cried out, Land! which, indeed, was the case; and the first sailor was sufficiently laughed at for his mistake, though, giving him his due, it looked at first as like a sail as ever any land at a distance could look. Towards evening we made the land very plain, distance about seven leagues south-by-east, and found that it was not an island, but a vast tract of land, extended, as we had reason to believe, from the side of Gilolo, and the Spice Islands, or that which we call Nova Guinea, and never yet fully discovered. The land lying away from the west-north-west to the south-east-by-south, still southerly. I, that was for making all possible discovery, was willing, besides the convenience of water, and perhaps fresh provisions, to put in here, and see what kind of country it was; so I ordered the brigantine to stand in for the shore. They sounded, but found no ground within half a league of the shore; so they hoisted out their boat, and went close in with the shore, where they found good anchor-hold in about thirty-six fathom, and a large creek, or mouth of a river; here they found eleven to thirteen fathom soft oozy sand, and the water half fresh at the mouth of the creek. Upon notice of this, we stood in, and came all to an anchor in the very creek; and, sending our boats up the creek, found the water perfectly fresh and very good upon the ebb, about a league up the river. Among all the islands in this part of the world, that is to say, from the Philippines eastward, of which there are an infinite number, we never came near any but we found ourselves surrounded with canoes and a variety of boats, bringing off to us cocoa-nuts, plantains, roots, and greens, to traffic for such things as they could get; and that in such numbers, we were tired with them, and sometimes alarmed, and obliged to fire at them. But here, though we saw great numbers of people at a distance from the shore, yet we saw not one boat or bark, nor anything else upon the water. We stayed two or three days taking in fresh water, but it was impossible to restrain our men from going on shore, to see what sort of a country it was; and I was very willing they should do so. Accordingly, two of our boats, with about thirty men in both of them, went on shore on the east side of the creek or harbour where our ship lay.