Page 73
An. 1683
Ambergrisewhere found.
a lighter colour, but very hard, neither had it any smell; and this also, I suppose, was a Cheat. Yet it is certain that in both these places there is Amber- griefe found.
I was told by one John Reed, a Bristol Man, that he was Prentice to a Master who traded to these Islands of Cape Verd, and once as he was riding at an Anchor at Fogo, another of these Islands, there was a lump of it swam by the Ship, and the Boat being ashore he mist it; but knew it to be Amber- griefe, having taken up a lump swimming in the like manner the Voyage before; and his Master hav- ing at several times bought pieces of it of the Na- tives of the Isle of Fogo, so as to enrich himself thereby. And so at the Necquebars, Englishmen have bought, as I have been credibly informed, great quantities of very good Ambergriefe. Yet the Inha- bitants are so subtle that they will counterfeit it, both there and here: and I have heard that in the Gulf of Florida, whence much of it comes, the Native Indians there use the same Fraud.
Upon this occasion, I cannot omit to tell my Reader what I learnt from Mr. Hill, a Chyrur- geon, upon his shewing me once a piece of Amber- griefe, which was thus. One Mr. Benjamin Barker, a man that I have been long well acquainted with, and know him to be a very diligent and observing person, and likewise very sober and credible, told this Mr. Hill, that being in the Bay of Honduras to procure Logwood, which grows there in great a- bundance; and passing in a Canoa over to one of the Islands in that Bay, he found upon the shore, on a sandy Bay there, a lump of Ambergriefe, so large, that when carried to Jamaica, he found it to weigh one hundred pound and upwards. When he first found it, it lay dry, above the mark which the Sea then came to at High-water; and he observed in it a great multitude of Beetles: It was of a dusky co- lour,