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
We continued here till Friday the 15th, and during all that time had one
continued storm, with impenetrable fogs, and incessant rain. On the
12th, I sent out the boat, with an officer to look for harbours on the
southern shore: The boat was absent till the 14th, and then returned,
with an account that there were five bays between the ship's station and
Cape Upright, where we might anchor in great safety. The officer told
me, that near Cape Upright he had fallen in with a few Indians, who had
given him a dog, and that; one of the women had offered him a child
which was sucking at her breast. It is scarcely necessary to say that he
refused it, but the offer seems to degrade these poor forlorn savages
more than any thing in their appearance or manner of life: It must be a
strange depravity of nature that leaves them destitute of affection for
their offspring, or a most deplorable situation that impresses
necessities upon them by which it is surmounted. Some hills, which,
when, we first came to this place, had no snow upon them, were now
covered, and the winter of this dreary and inhospitable region seemed to
have set in at once: The poor seamen not only suffered much by the cold,
but had scarcely ever a dry thread about them: I therefore distributed
among the crews of both the ships, not excepting the officers, two bales
of a thick woollen stuff, called Fearnought, which is provided by the
government, so that every body on board had now a warm jacket, which at
this time was found both comfortable and salutary.
At eight o'clock in the morning of the 15th, we weighed and made sail,
and at three o'clock in the afternoon, we were once more abreast of Cape
Monday, and at five we anchored in a bay on the east side of it. The
pitch of the cape bore N.W. distant half a mile, and the extreme points
of the bay from E. to N. by W. We lay at about half a cable's length
from the nearest shore, which was a low island between the ship and the
cape.
At six o'clock the next morning we weighed, and found that the palm was
gone from the small bower anchor. The wind was at W.N.W. with hard rain:
At eight o'clock we found a strong current setting us to the eastward,
and at noon, Cape Monday bore W.N.W. distant two miles. The Tamar being
to windward of us, fetched into the bay, and anchored again. We
continued to lose ground upon every tack, and therefore, at two o'clock,
anchored upon the southern shore in sixteen fathom, about five miles to
the eastward of Cape Monday. At three, however, I weighed again, for the
boat having sounded round the ship, found the ground rocky. The wind was
N.W. with hard rain, and we continued working all the rest of the day,
and all night, every man on board being upon deck the whole time, and
every one wet to the skin; for the rain, or rather sheets of water, that
came down, did not cease a moment.
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