Voyages and Works of John Davis, the Navigator

The fift of December, 1604, we set saile from the Cowes in the Ile of Wight. The three and twentieth we arrived at Teneriffe, in the road of Aratana. The fourteenth of January at night we were troubled with extreme heate, lightnings, thunder and raine all the night.

The sixteenth we passed under the Equinoctiall Line, shaping our course for the Ile Loronnah, the wind being at South South-east, our course South South-west; and some three degrees South-ward of the Line, we met with such multitudes of fish, as it is incredible to report, so that with our Hookes, Lines, and Harping Irons wee tooke so many Dolphines, Bonitos, and other fishes, that our men were so wearie with eating of fish, that we could not tell what to doe with it. Moreover there were fowles called Pasharaboues and Alcatrarzes. We tooke many of those Pasharaboues, for it is a fowle that delighteth to come to a ship in the night; and if you doe but hold up your hand, they will light upon it. The other foule, called Alcatrarzi, is a kind of Hawlke that liveth by fishing. For when the Bonitos or Dolphines doe chase the flying fish under the water, so that he is glad to flee from them out of the water to save his life this Alcatrarzi flyeth after them like a Hawke after a Partridge. Of these flying fishes I have seene so many flee together, that you would have thought them to be a great flocke of Birds afarre off. They are but little fishes, scarsly so big as an Hering.