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
The next morning, the weather being fine, we veered the ship close in
shore, with a spring upon our cable, so that we brought our broadside to
bear upon the watering-place, for the protection of the boats that were
to be employed there. As there was reason to suppose that the natives
whom we had seen among the trees the night before, were not now far
distant, I fired a couple of shot into the wood, before I sent the
waterers ashore; I also sent the lieutenant in the cutter, well manned
and armed, with the boat that carried them, and ordered him and his
people to keep on board, and lie close to the beach, to cover the
watering-boat while she was loading, and to keep discharging muskets
into the wood on each side of the party that were filling the water.
These orders were well executed, the beach was steep, so that the boats
could lie close to the people that were at work, and the lieutenant from
the cutter fired three or four vollies of small arms into the woods
before any of the men went on shore, and none of the natives appearing,
the waterers landed and went to work. But notwithstanding all these
precautions, before they had been on shore a quarter of an hour, a
flight of arrows was discharged among them, one of which dangerously
wounded a man that was filling water in the breast, and another stuck
into a bareca on which Mr Pitcairn was sitting. The people on board the
cutter immediately fired several vollies of small arms into that part of
the wood from which the arrows came, and I recalled the boats that I
might more effectually drive the Indians from their ambuscades with
grape-shot from the ship's guns. When the boats and people were on
board, we began to fire, and soon after saw about two hundred men rush
out of the woods, and run along the beach with the utmost precipitation.
We judged the coast to be now effectually cleared, but in a little time
we perceived that a great number had got together on the westermost
point of the bay, where they probably thought themselves beyond our
reach: To convince them therefore of the contrary, I ordered a gun to be
fired at them with round shot; the ball just grazing the water rose
again, and fell in the middle of them, upon which they dispersed with
great hurry and confusion, and we saw no more of them. After this we
watered without any farther molestation, but all the while our boats
were on shore, we had the precaution to keep firing the ship's guns into
the wood on both sides of them, and the cutter, which lay close to the
beach, as she did before, kept up a constant fire of small arms in
platoons, at the same time. As we saw none of the natives daring all
this firing, we should have thought that none of them had ventured back
into the wood, if our people had not reported that they heard groans
from several parts of it, like those of dying men.
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