is said to produce fluxes. I shall only add that it is described both by Dampier and in Ray's _History of Plants_. Besides the fruits already enumerated, there were many other vegetables extremely conducive to the cure of the malady we had long laboured under, such as water melons, dandelion, creeping purslan, mint, scurvy grass, and sorrel; all which, together with the fresh meats of the place, we devoured with great eagerness, prompted thereto by the strong inclination which, in scorbutic disorders, nature never fails of exciting for those powerful specifics. It will easily be conceived from what hath been already said that our chear upon this island was in some degree luxurious; but I have not yet recited all the varieties of provision which we here indulged in. Indeed we thought it prudent totally to abstain from fish, the few we caught at our first arrival having surfeited those who eat of them; but considering how much we had been inured to that species of food we did not regard this circumstance as a disadvantage, especially as the defect was so amply supplied by the beef, pork, and fowls already mentioned, and by great plenty of wild fowl; for it is to be remembered that near the centre of the island there were two considerable pieces of fresh water, which abounded with duck, teal, and curlew; not to mention the whistling plover, which we found there in prodigious plenty. {286} It may now perhaps be wondered at that an island so exquisitely furnished with the conveniencies of life, and so well adapted not only to the subsistence but likewise to the enjoyment of mankind, should be entirely destitute of inhabitants, especially as it is in the neighbourhood of other islands, which in some measure depend upon this for their support. To obviate this difficulty, I must observe that it is not fifty years since the island was depopulated. The Indians we had in our custody assured us that formerly the three islands of Tinian, Rota, and Guam were all full of inhabitants; and that Tinian alone contained thirty thousand souls: but a sickness raging amongst these islands which destroyed multitudes of the people, the Spaniards, to recruit their numbers at Guam, which were extremely diminished by the mortality, ordered all the inhabitants of Tinian thither; where, languishing for their former habitations and their customary method of life, the greatest part of them in a few years died of grief. Indeed, independent of that attachment which all mankind have ever shown to the places of their birth and bringing up, it should seem from what has been already said that there were few countries more worthy to be regretted than this of Tinian.