172 EEPOET OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



Newes from the Bermudas. 



" Bermuda, July, 1609." 



" Iii half an houre he tooke so many fishes with hookes as did suffice 

 the whole company [150 men] one day." 



" Fish is there so abundant, that if a man steppe into the water, they 

 will come round about him ; so that men were faine to get out for fear 

 of byting. These fishes are very fat & sweete, & of that proportion & 

 bignesse that three of them will conveniently lade two men : those we 

 called rock-fish." 



" Besides there are such abundance of mullets, that with a seane 

 might be taken at one drought, one thousand at the least, & infinite 

 store of pilchards, with divers kinds of great fishes, the names of them 

 unknowne to me: of tray fishes very great ones, & so great store, as 

 that there hath been taken in one night with making lights, even suf- 

 ficient to feed the whole company (150 men) a day." 



" We were no sooner come within a league of the land," &c. (Page 

 18.) (July, 1612.) 



" Hogges, Turkles, Fish, & Fowle do abound as the dust of the earth." 

 (Page 20.) 



"Angell-fish — very strange & beutiful to behold." (Page 21.) 



Whale, Sword fish & Threasher. — " The sword fish swimmes under the 

 whale, & pricketh him upward : The Threasher keepeth above him, & 

 with a mighty great thing like unto a flaile, hee so bangeth the whale, 

 that hee will roare as though it thuudered, & doth give him such blowes, 

 with his weapon, that you would thinke it to be a crake of great shot," 

 (Page 22.) 



" The whales come in Febrnarie & tarry till June." 



The Remembrancer, London. Part 2, 1776, page 79. 



" Madrid, April 22, [1776.] Several of our frigates have been sent from 

 Acapulca- to make discoveries and propagate the gospel among the 

 Indians to the North of California ; in which expedition, in the month 

 of July, 1774, the Spaniards navigated as high upon the coast as the 

 latitude 58 deg. 20 min., (six degrees above Cape Blanco.) They dis- 

 covered several good ports and navigable rivers upon the West coast of 

 this great continent. In one of the largest ports they have established 

 a garrison, and called the port Presidio de San Carlos, and have left a 

 mission at every port where inhabitants were to be found. The account 

 mentions the Indians to be a docile sort of people, agreeable in the 

 countenance, honest in their traffic, and neat in their dress, but at the 

 same time idolaters of the greatest degree, never before having any 

 intercourse with Europeans. M. Bucarelli, viceroy of New Spain, has 

 received his Catholic Majesty's thanks for the discoveries, as they were 

 made under his directions, and the several navy officers upon that 

 service have been preferred. It is imagined that those new discoveries 

 will be very advantageous, as the coast abounds with plenty of whales, 

 as also a fish equal to the Newfoundland cod, known in Spain by the 

 name of bacallao. 1 — Madrid Gazette, published by authority." 



1 First (?) meutiou of occurrence of cod-fish on the Pacific coast of North America. 



