By my observation, I found that we were in the latitude of 27° 13' south meridian; distance from the Ladrones about 16° east. While my shallops were gone, I went on shore, and some of my men set up tents, as well for the convenience of their traffick, as for their resting on shore all night; keeping, however, a good guard, and having two of our ship's dogs with them, who never failed giving them notice, whenever any of the natives came near them; for what ailed the dogs I know not, but neither of them could bear the sight of the Indians, and we had much to do to keep them from flying at them. While we rode here, we had the most violent storm of wind with rain, and with great claps of thunder, that we had yet sustained since we came out of England. It was our comfort that the wind came off shore, for it blew at south, and shifting between the south, south-east, and south-west, with such excessive gusts, and so furious, and withal, not only by squalls and sudden flaws, but a settled terrible tempest, that had it been from off sea, as it was off shore, we must have perished, there had been no remedy, and even as it was, we rode in great danger. My boatswain called out twice to me to cut my masts by the board, protesting we should either bring our anchors home, or founder as we rode; and indeed the sea broke over us many times in a terrible manner. As I said before, we had an indifferent good road, and so we had, but not a very good one, for the land was low; and on the east we lay a little open. However, our ground-tackle was good, and our ship very tight, and I told the boatswain I would rather slip the cable and go off to sea than cut the masts. However, in about four hours' time more we found the wind abate, though it blew very hard for three days after. I was in great pain for my two shallops in this tempest, but they had both the good luck to lie close under the shore; and one indeed had hauled quite upon the land, where the men lay on shore under their sail, so that they got no damage; and about three days after, one of them returned, and brought me word they had been to the west, where they had made very little discovery, as to the situation of the country, or whether it was an island or a continent, but they had conversed with the natives very often, and found several who had pieces of gold hanging, some in their hair, some about their necks; and they made a shift to bring as many with them as weighed, all put together, seventeen or eighteen ounces, for which they had bartered toys and trifles, as we did; but they found no rivers, where they could discover any gold in the sands, as We had done, so that they believed it all came from the side where we were.