Vill INTRODUCTION. 
thirty in circumference ; they also concluded that it was 
uninhabited by man, and resolved to send boats on shore 
to make observations, and leave a few hogs, which might 
breed and be afterwards useful. When, however, they were 
preparing to disembark, a strong contrary gale arose, which 
obliged them to sheer off, and be content with the view 
already obtained. Oviedo calls it “the remotest island in 
the whole world,” meaning, we presume, the most distant 
from any land, and mentions the swarms of birds and 
flying-fish, with the contests between them, as presenting 
one of the most amusing spectacles he had ever beheld.* 
The first native of England known to have set foot upon 
the Islands, was a mariner named Henry May, who, while 
on a voyage from the West Indies to Europe, in a French 
vessel, in the year 1593, was wrecked upon the north-west 
reefs, several miles distant from the shore. He found the 
land overgrown with trees of various kinds, though chiefly 
with the cedar; “many hogs” were also met with, but 
these were so lean as to be unfit for food ; birds, fish, and 
turtle were in great abundance. Fortunately for May and 
his French companions, the carpenter’s tools, with a portion 
of the sails and rigging of the ship, were saved by them 
before the wreck went to pieces. This enabled them to cut 
down cedars and construct “a barque of eighty tunnes,” in 
which, after a sojourn of nearly five months in those Isles, 
they all set sail on the 11th May. On the 20th of the 
same month they made the Island of Cape Breton, when 
they took in wood and water, and saiied for the banks of 
Newfoundland. Here they met with many ships, but none 
* Murray’s British America. 
