As to the residence upon the island, the principal inconvenience attending it is the vast numbers of muscatos, and various other species of flies, together with an insect called a tick; this, 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, though none of us ever received any injury from them. But the most important and formidable exception to this place remains still to be told. This is the inconvenience of the road and the little security there is in some seasons for a ship at anchor. The only proper anchoring place for ships of burthen is at the S.W. end of the island. Here the _Centurion_ anchored in twenty and twenty-two fathom water about a mile and an half distant from the shore opposite to a sandy bay. The bottom of this road is full of {289} sharp-pointed coral rocks, which, during four months of the year, that is from the middle of June to the middle of October, render it a very unsafe anchorage. This is the season of the western monsoons, when near the full and change of the moon, but more particularly at the change, the wind is usually variable all round the compass, and seldom fails to blow with such fury that the stoutest cables are not to be confided in. What adds to the danger at these times is the excessive rapidity of the tide of flood which sets to the S.E. between this island and that of Aguiguan, a small islet near the southern extremity of Tinian. This tide runs at first with a vast head and overfall of water, occasioning such a hollow and overgrown sea as is scarcely to be conceived; so that (as will be more particularly recited in the sequel) we were under the dreadful apprehensions of being pooped by it, though we were in a sixty-gun ship. In the remaining eight months of the year, that is from the middle of October to the middle of June, there is a constant season of settled weather, when, if the cables are but well armed, there is scarcely any danger of their being even rubbed, so that during all that interval it is as secure a road as could be wished for. I shall only add that the anchoring bank is very shelving, and stretches along the S.W. end of the island, and is entirely free from shoals, except a reef of rocks which is visible, and lies about half a mile from the shore, affording a narrow passage into a small sandy bay, which is the only place where boats can possibly land. Having given this account of the island and its produce, it is necessary to return to our own history.