It is amazing that the early mariners were not perpetually blundering ashore. By what secret instincts they were advised I know not; yet it is certain they made as little of being a hundred miles out of their course without knowing it, as we should in these days of an error of the length of a ship's cable. Dampier continued to sail to the eastwards, and on July 25th signs unmistakable of the neighbourhood of land were witnessed in the form of quantities of floating seaweed and moss; but it was apparently not until August 2nd that the coast hove into view, on which date Dampier says, “We stood in towards the land to look for an harbour to refresh ourselves, after a voyage of 114 degrees from Brazil.” They coasted for a few days in vain search of a secure anchorage, and then observing an opening of the land they made for it, and brought up in two fathoms and a half of water. This opening Dampier called Shark's Bay, a name it has ever since retained.[16] He makes this bay to lie in 25° S. latitude and 87° longitude E. from the Cape of Good Hope, “which is less,” he says, “by a hundred and ninety-five leagues than is laid down in the common draughts.” He paints a pretty picture of his first view of this place, telling us of sweet-scented trees, of shrubs gay as the rainbow with blossoms and berries, of a many-coloured vegetation, red, white, yellow, and blue, the last preponderating, and all the air round about very fragrant and delicious with the perfumes of the soil. The men caught sharks and devoured them with relish,—a hint not only of very bad stores, but of provisions growing scarce; for disgusting as the salt-beef of the sea becomes after a long course of it, he must have a singular stomach and a stranger appetite who will choose shark in preference. One of the fish they captured was eleven feet long, and inside of it they found the head and bones of a hippopotamus, the hairy lips of which were still sound “and not putrefied.” The jaw was full of teeth, two of them eight inches long and as big as a man's thumb; “The flesh of it was divided among my Men, and they took care that no Waste should be made of it, but thought it as things stood, good Entertainment.”