A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 12: Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the; Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea; and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present TimeKerr, Robert
History
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 12: Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the; Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea; and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time
Kerr, Robert
Voyages and travels
"As to the residence upon the island, the principal inconvenience
attending it is the vast numbers of musquitoes, and various other
species of flies, together with an insect called a tick, which, though
principally attached to the cattle, would yet frequently fasten upon our
limbs and bodies, and if not perceived and removed in time, would bury
its head under the skin, and raise a painful inflammation. We found
here, too, centipedes and scorpions, which we supposed were venomous,
but none of us ever received any injury from them."]
While we lay here, I sent the Tamar to examine the island of Saypan,
Which is much larger than Tinian, rises higher, and, in my opinion, has
a much pleasanter appearance. She anchored to the leeward of it, at the
distance of a mile from the shore, and in about ten fathom water, with
much the same kind of ground as we had in the road of Tinian.
Her people landed upon a fine sandy beach which is six or seven miles
long, and walked up into the woods, where they saw many trees which were
fit for top-masts.
They saw no fowls, nor any tracks of cattle; but of hogs and guanicoes
there was plenty. They found no fresh water near the beach, but saw a
large pond inland, which they did not examine. They saw large heaps of
pearl oyster-shells thrown up together, and other signs of people having
been there not long before: Possibly the Spaniards may go thither at
some season of the years, and carry on a pearl fishery. They also saw
many of those, square pyramidal pillars which are to be found at Tinian,
and which are particularly described in the account of Lord Anson's
voyage.
On Monday the 30th of September, having now been here nine weeks, and
our sick being pretty well recovered, I ordered, the tents to be struck,
and with the forge and oven carried back to the ship; I also laid in
about two thousand cocoa-nuts, which I had experienced to be so powerful
a remedy for the scurvy, and the next day I weighed, hoping, that before
we should get the length of the Bashé Island, the N.E. monsoon would be
set in. I stood along the shore to take in the beef-hunters; but we had
very little wind this day and the next till the evening, when it came to
the westward and blew fresh: I then stood to the northward till the
morning of the 3d, when we made Anatacan, an island that is remarkably
high, and the same that was first fallen in with by Lord Anson.
SECTION XII.
_The Run from Tinian to Pulo Timoan, with some Account of that Island,
its Inhabitants and Productions, and thence to Batavia._
We continued our course till Thursday the 10th, when being in latitude
18°33'N. longitude 136°50'E. we found the ship two-and-twenty miles to
the southward of her account, which must have been the effect of a
strong current in that direction. The variation here was 5°10'E. and for
some time we found it regularly decreasing, so that on the 19th, being
in latitude 21°10'N. longitude 124°17'E. the needle pointed due north.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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