“Sunday, 14th Jan.--Dropped down from Bassam during the nighte, keeping a good offing and sounding every five minutes. Passed Cape Tres Puntas in the nighte, and cast anchor soon after daybreak in Axim Bay in seven fathoms. Soon after we had anchored we perceaved a fishing canoe to be approaching from the shoare; it was paddled by three negroes, and two more were sitting near by the stern. When it hadde come alongside we could see that, besides the blacks, there was in the canoe a white man who lay at the bottom and seemed to bee sicke. The negroes climbed up the side on to the deck, but the white man was too feeble to follow them, wherefore we dropped into the canoe a rope, in the end whereof was a bowline or loop; and when the sick man had passed this round his middle we drew him up on to the quarter deck. “The aspect of this man was most wretched and pitifull. He was quite naked excepting for a loin cloth such as the black people use to wear in these parts. His wrists and ankles--one of which bore an iron ring--were all raw and festered; his backe and shoulders were seamed with scars not yet fully healed; his ears were torn and cut with greate notches, and, most horrid of all, the balls of his eyes were gone from their socketts so that his face was as that of a dead skull. Moreover, his whole person was as meagre and cadaverous as though he had been long sicke of some wasting distemper or calenture. At first he was so feeble that he could not stand alone, but after we had fed him with fresh meate and made him drink a cuppe of Canary wine, he revived somewhat, and being sett to rest in a bed in the cabin, he fell into a deep sleep and so continueth. “Monday, 15th Jan.--The strange man remaineth still very sick and feeble, but he hath related an account of the circumstances that broughte him to so wretched a condition. This narrative I received from his owne lippes, and so set it down, knowing not whether it bee a true relation or made up from a disordered imagination. “The man deposeth that his name is José d’Almeida, and that he is a Portugal by birth. For many years past he hath lived at the Castle of St. George at Mina on the Gold Coast, being engaged in trade with the blacks.