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THE CAPTIVITY OF HANS STADE

fresh water at the island, we sailed further. In a storm at night, we had lost sight of our two companion ships, so that we sailed alone. The winds were much against us, for they have the peculiarity in that sea, that when the sun is on the north side of the equinoctial line, they blow from the south.[1] In the same manner when the sun is on the south side, they come from the north, and they are wont to blow stiffly during five months from one quarter. They prevented us for four months from sailing our proper course,then when the month of September arrived, the winds began to be northerly, and we directed our course south-south-west towards America.

Caput VII.

How, in twenty-eight degrees latitude, we arrived at the Continent of America, and could not make out the harbour, whither we had been directed; and how a great storm arose on the coast.

Thereupon it happened that one day, which was the eighteenth November, the steersman took the sun's height, and found that we were in latitude twenty-eight degrees:[2] we then sought land to the west. Thereafter on the twenty- fourth of the said month we saw land. We had been six months at sea, and had often been exposed to great danger. Now as we came hard by the coast we knew not the harbour, and could not find the mark which the head steersman had given us. Also we hardly dared enter unknown harbours, and therefore we tacked up and down the coast. It began to blow hard, till fearing that nothing would save us from perishing on the rocks, we lashed

  1. ↑ Or, in modern parlance, the winds follow the sun.
  2. ↑ South latitude. This would be about seven miles and a half south of the Punta de Naufragados, the southernmost extremity of the Ilha de Sta. Catharina in the modern province of that name.
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