Having briefly recounted the conveniencies of this place, the excellency and quantity of its fruits and provisions, the neatness of its lawns, the stateliness, freshness, and fragrance of its woods, the happy inequality of its surface, and the variety and elegance of the views it afforded, I must now observe that all these advantages were greatly enhanced by the healthiness of its climate, by the almost constant breezes which prevail there, and by the frequent showers which fell there; for these, instead of the heavy continued rains which in some countries render great part of the year so unpleasing, were usually of a very short and almost momentary duration. Hence they were extremely grateful and refreshing, and were perhaps one cause of the salubrity of the air, and of the extraordinary influence it was observed to have upon us in increasing and invigorating our appetites and digestion. This effect was indeed remarkable, since those amongst our officers who were at all other times spare and temperate eaters, who, besides a slight breakfast, used to make but one moderate repast a day, were here, in appearance, transformed into gluttons; for instead of one reasonable flesh meal, they were now scarcely satisfied with three, each of them too so prodigious in quantity as would at another time have produced a fever or a surfeit. And yet our digestion so well corresponded to the keenness of our appetites that we were neither disordered nor even loaded by this uncommon repletion; for after having, according to the custom of the {288} island, made a large beef breakfast, it was not long before we began to consider the approach of dinner as a very desirable, though somewhat tardy, incident. After giving these large encomiums to this island, in which, however, I conceive I have not done it justice, it is necessary I should speak of those circumstances in which it is defective, whether in point of beauty or utility. And, first, with respect to its water. I must own that, before I had seen this spot, I did not conceive that the absence of running water, of which it is entirely destitute, could have been so well replaced by any other means as it is in this island; since though there are no streams, yet the water of the wells and springs, which are to be met with everywhere near the surface, is extremely good; and in the midst of the island there are two or three considerable pieces of excellent water, the turf of whose banks was as clean, as even, and as regularly disposed as if they had been basons purposely made for the decoration of the place. It must, however, be confessed that with regard to the beauty of the prospects, the want of rills and streams is a very great defect, not to be compensated either by large pieces of standing water or by the neighbourhood of the sea, though that, from the smallness of the island generally, makes a part of every extensive landskip.