After the long-boat and cutter were gone, the captain, and those who were left with him, proposed to pass to the northward in the barge and yawl: but the weather was so bad, and the difficulty of subsisting so great, that it was two months from the departure of the long-boat before he was able to put to sea. It seems the place where the _Wager_ was cast away was not a part of the continent, as was first imagined, but an island at some distance from the main, which afforded no other sorts of provision but shell-fish and a few herbs; and as the greatest part of what they had gotten from the ship was carried off in the long-boat, the captain and his people were often in extreme want of food, especially as they chose to preserve what little sea provisions remained, for their store when they should go to the northward. During their residence at this island, which was by the seamen denominated Wager's Island, they had now and then a straggling canoe or two of Indians, which came and bartered their fish and other provisions with our people. This was some little relief to their necessities, and at another season might perhaps have been greater: for as there were several Indian huts on the shore, it was supposed that in some years, during the height of summer, many of these savages might resort thither to fish: indeed, from what has been related in the account of the _Anna_ pink, it should seem to be the general practice of those Indians to frequent this coast in the summer time for the benefit of fishing, and to retire in the winter into a better climate, more to the northward. On this mention of the _Anna_ pink, I cannot but observe {144} how much it is to be lamented that the _Wager's_ people had no knowledge of her being so near them on the coast; for as she was not above thirty leagues distant from them, and came into their neighbourhood about the same time the _Wager_ was lost, and was a fine roomy ship, she could easily have taken them all on board, and have carried them to Juan Fernandes. Indeed, I suspect she was still nearer to them than what is here estimated; for several of the _Wager's_ people, at different times, heard the report of a cannon, which I conceive could be no other than the evening gun fired from the _Anna_ pink, especially as what was heard at Wager's Island was about the same time of the day. But to return to Captain Cheap.