the coast as I visited, are bound up with a French work, intitled, “Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes,” which was published in 1756, and I found them tolerably exact; yet I know not by whom, nor when they were taken: and though New Holland and New Guinea are in them represented as two distinct countries, the very history in which they are bound up leaves it in doubt. I pretend however to no more merit in this part of the voyage, than to have established the fact beyond all controversy. As the two countries lie very near each other, and the intermediate space is full of islands, it is reasonable to suppose that they were both peopled from one common stock: yet no intercourse appears to have been kept up between them; for if there had, the cocoa-nuts, bread-fruit, plantains, and other fruits of New Guinea, which are equally necessary for the support of life, would certainly have been transplanted to New Holland, where no traces of them are to be found. The author of the “Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes,” in his account of La Maire’s voyage, has given a vocabulary of the language that is spoken in an island near New Britain, and we find, by comparing that vocabulary with the words which we learnt in New Holland, that the languages are not the same. If, therefore, it should appear, that the languages of New Britain and New Guinea are the same, there will be reason to suppose that New Britain and New Guinea were peopled from a common stock; but that the inhabitants of New Holland had a different origin, notwithstanding the proximity of the countries. CHAP. VIII. THE PASSAGE FROM NEW GUINEA TO THE ISLAND OF SAVU, AND THE TRANSACTIONS THERE. WE made sail, from noon on Monday the 3d to noon on Tuesday the 4th, standing to the westward, and all the time kept in soundings, having from fourteen to thirty fathom; not regular, but sometimes more, sometimes less. At noon on the 4th, we were in fourteen fathom, and latitude 6° 44ʹ S., longitude 223° 51ʹ W.; our course and distance since the 3d at noon, were S. 76 W. one hundred and twenty miles to the westward. At noon on the 5th of September, we were in latitude 7° 25ʹ S., longitude 225° 41ʹ W.; having been in soundings the whole time from ten to twenty fathom.