at the Isle of Mauritius; Schouten returned to his country; the Concord and Horn came back in two years and ten days.
James l'Hermite, a Dutchman, commanding a fleet of eleven ships, sailed in 1623, with the scheme of making the conquest of Peru; he got into the South Seas round Cape Horn, and harrassed the Spanish coats, from whence he went to the Ladrones, and thence to Batavia, without making any discoveries in the South Seas. He died, after clearing the straits of Sonda; and his ship, almost the only one of the whole fleet, arrived in the Texel the 9th of July, 1626.
In 1683, Cowley, an Englishman, sailed from Virginia, doubled Cape Horn, made several attacks upon the Spanish coasts, came to the Ladrones, and returned to England by the Cape of Good Hope, where he arrived on the 12th of October, 1686. This navigator has made no discoveries in the South Seas; he pretends to have found out the Isle of Pepis in the North Sea[1], in 47° southern latitude, about eighty leagues from the coat of Patagonia; I have sought it three times, and the English twice, without finding it.
- ↑ North Sea signifies here the Atlantic Ocean, and is put in opposition to South Sea; the former taking in the ocean on this side the Magellanic straits, the latter that which is west of them. The appellation, though somewhat improper, by calling the sea about the south pole the North Sea, is however sometimes employed by some writers. F.
