The 23rd, at daybreak, we were cheered with the discovery of two islands in the western board. This gave us all great joy, and raised our drooping spirits, for before this a universal dejection had seized us, and we almost despaired of ever seeing land again. The nearest of these islands we afterwards found to be Anatacan. The other was the island of Serigan, and had rather the appearance of a high rock than a place we could hope to anchor at. We were extremely impatient to get in with the nearest island, where we expected to meet with anchoring ground and an opportunity of refreshing our sick; but the wind proved so variable all day, and there was so little of it, that we advanced towards it but slowly. However, by the next morning we were got so far to the westward that we were in view of a third island, which was that of Paxaros, though marked in the chart only as a rock. This was small and very low land, and we had passed within less than a mile of it in the night without seeing it. And now at noon, being within four miles of the island of Anatacan, the boat was sent away to examine the anchoring ground and the produce of the place, and we were not a little solicitous for her return, as we then conceived our fate to depend upon the report we should receive; for the other two islands were obviously enough incapable of furnishing us with any assistance, and we knew not then that there were any others which we could reach. In the evening the boat came back, and the crew informed us that there was no place for a ship to anchor. This account of the impossibility of anchoring at this island occasioned a general melancholy on board, for we considered it as little less than the prelude to our destruction; and now the only possible circumstance that could secure the few that remained alive from perishing was the accidental falling in with some other of the Ladrone Islands better prepared for our accommodation, and as our knowledge of these islands was extremely imperfect, we were to trust entirely to chance for our guidance; only, as they are all of them usually laid down near the same meridian, and we had conceived those we had already seen to be part of them, we concluded to stand to the southward as the most probable means of falling in with the next. Thus, with the most gloomy persuasion of our approaching destruction, we stood from the island of Anatacan, having all of us the strongest apprehensions either of dying of the scurvy or perishing with the ship, which, for want of hands to work her pumps, might in a short time be expected to founder. TINIAN.