We went along three hundred leagues of coast, as I have mentioned, and diminished the latitude 2½°, which brought us into 9°. From hence we fell in with a bank of from three to nine fathoms, which extends along the coast above 180 leagues. We went over it along the coast to 7½° S. latitude, and the end of it is in 5°. We could not go farther on for the many shoals and great currents, so we were obliged to sail out S.W. in that depth to 11° S. latitude. There is all over it an archipelago of islands without number, by which we passed, and at the end of the eleventh degree the bank became shoaler. Here were very large islands, and there appeared more to the southward: they were inhabited by black people, very corpulent, and naked: their arms were lances, arrows, and clubs of stone ill-fashioned. We could not get any of their arms. We caught in all this land twenty persons of different nations, that with them we might be able to give a better account to Your Majesty. They give much notice of other people, although as yet they do not make themselves well understood. We went upon this bank for two months, at the end of which time we found ourselves in twenty-five fathoms, and in 5° S. latitude, and ten leagues from the coast. And having gone 480 leagues, here the coast goes to the N.E. I did not reach it, for the bank became very shallow. So we stood to the north, and in twenty-five fathoms to 4° latitude, where we fell in with a coast, which likewise lay in a direction east and west. We did not see the eastern termination, but from what we understood of it, it joins the other we had left on account of the bank, the sea being very smooth. This land is peopled by blacks, different from all the others: they are better adorned: they use arrows, darts, and large shields, and some sticks of bamboo filled with lime, with which, by throwing it out, they blind their enemies. Finally, we stood to the W.N.W. along the coast, always finding this people, for we landed in many places: also in it we took possession for Your Majesty. In this land also we found iron, china bells, and other things, by which we knew we were near the Malucas; and so we ran along this coast above 130 leagues, where it comes to a termination fifty leagues before you reach the Malucas. There is an infinity of islands to the southward, and very large, which for the want of provisions we did not approach; for I doubt if in ten years could be examined the coasts of all the islands we descried. We observed the variation in all this land of New Guinea to the Molucas; and in all of it the variation agrees with the meridian of the Ladrone Islands and of the Philippine Islands.