improve, if not to exhaust all his stock." It must be remembered that Captain Rogers wrote this little growl, and found his stock of patience running short, on the equator, in a small ship, half full of sick men, and soon after what he calls "those general misunderstandings, and several unhappy differences among us, arrising out of, and before our attack on Guiaquil." That Rogers had at this time even more difficult questions and people to deal with, is shown by an entry in his log, that, "amongst the prisoners taken on board the last prize from Panama, was a gentlewoman and her family, her eldest daughter, a pretty young woman of about 18 newly married, and her husband with her, to whom we assigned the great cabin of the prize, none being suffer'd to intrude amongst them. Yet I was told the husband shew'd evident marks of jealousy, the Spaniard's epidemick, but I hope he had not the least reason for it amongst us, my third lieutenant, Glendall, alone having charge of the ship, who being above 50 years of age appeared to us the most secure guardian to females that had the least charm;" which is followed by the description of "an ugly creature call'd by the Spaniards a sloth, caught in Gorgona, and which," says Rogers, "being let go at the lower part of the mizen shrouds was two hours getting to the masthead, keeping all the time an equal and slow pace as if he walk'd by art and all his movements had been directed by clockwork within him." "Many monkeys were shot in Gorgona Island, fricassees and broth being made of them for the sick men." But though "Capt. Dampier, who had been accustomed to such food, said he never eat any thing in London that seemed so delicious as a monkey or baboon of these parts, none of the Duke's officers would touch them, provisions being not yet scarce enough." Rogers also describes the "land turtles alias tortoises caught in the Gallapagos islands as the ugliest creatures in nature, with a shell black as jet not unlike the top of an old hackney coach; the neck long about the bigness of a mans wrist, with club feet as big as ones fist shaped like those of an elephant, the head little and visage small like a snake looking very old and black." He adds: "they lay eggs on our deck about the size of gooses, white with a large thick shell exactly round." [Sidenote: _Negroes muster'd and encourag'd to fight if there should be occasion._] [Sidenote: _The men exercised by a sham fight with the "Dutchess."_]