This man, whose name is doubtful, but is given as Alonso Sanchez, was sailing on a voyage from one of the Spanish ports to England or Flanders.

He had a crew of seventeen men.

When they had got well out to sea a severe easterly gale sprung up, which drove the vessel before it to the westward.

Day after day and week after week, for twenty-eight days, this gale continued.

The islands were all left far behind, and the ship was carried into a region far beyond the limits of the ocean marked on the charts.