V2 THE ATLANTIC. [cHapP. Iv. 
board Oviedo, the well-known author of the history of the 
West Indies. Oviedo says, addressing the Emperor Charles V., 
“In the year 1515, when I first came to inform your majesty 
of the state of things in India, I observed that in my voyage, 
when to windward of the island of Bermudas, otherwise called 
‘Gorza,’ being the most remote of all the islands yet found in 
the world, I determined to send some of the people ashore, both 
to search for what might be there and to leave certain hogs 
upon it to propagate. But on account of a contrary wind I 
could not bring the ship nearer than cannon-shot.” 
The first English printed account of Bermudas is by Henry 
May, a sailor, who was wrecked there in 1593, in a French ship 
commanded by M. de la Barbotier. May states that he and the 
French crew found on the island many hogs, but these so lean 
as to be unfit for food, and abundance of birds, fish, and turtle. 
By good luck the chests of carpenter’s tools were saved from 
the wreck, along with some sails and rigging, and May and his 
companions contrived to build a vessel of considerable size of 
the native cedar, in which, after remaining about five months 
on the islands, they stood for the Banks of Newfoundland. 
“Here they met with many ships, but none of them charitably 
inclined toward them, when it pleased God they fell in with 
‘the honest English bark /awmouth,’ which received them on 
board. While in this vessel they ‘tooke’ a French ship, into — 
which Captain de la Barbotier and his seamen were transferred; - 
May himself remaining with the English vessel, which arrived 
at Falmouth in August, 1594.”* 
The next we hear of Bermudas is from an account by one 
of her crew of the wreck of the Sea Adventure, in the year 
1609. 
The Sea Adventure was one of a small fleet dispatched from 
* “The Naturalist in Bermuda,” by John Matthew Jones, Esq., of the Middle Tem- 
ple, London, 1859. 
