There are but few insects in this place, but there is a species of snail found upon the tops of the highest ridges, which probably has been there since the original creation of their kind, at the beginning of the world. It is indeed very difficult to conceive how any thing which was not deposited here at its creation, or brought hither by the diligence of man, could find its way to a place so severed from the rest of the world, by seas of immense extent, except the hypothesis that has been mentioned on another occasion be adopted, and this rock be supposed to have been left behind, when a large tract of country, of which it was part, subsided by some convulsion of nature, and was swallowed up in the ocean. At one o’clock in the afternoon of the 4th of May, we weighed and stood out of the road, in company with the Portland man-of-war, and twelve sail of Indiamen. We continued to sail in company with the fleet, till the 10th in the morning, when, perceiving that we sailed much heavier than any other ship, and thinking it for that reason probable that the Portland would get home before us, I made the signal to speak with her, upon which Captain Elliot himself came on board, and I delivered to him a letter to the Admiralty, with a box, containing the common log-books of the ship, and the journals of some of the officers. We continued in company, however, till the 23d in the morning, and then there was not one of the ships in sight. About one o’clock in the afternoon died our first lieutenant Mr. Hicks, and in the evening we committed his body to the sea, with the usual ceremonies. The disease of which he died, was a consumption, and as he was not free from it when we sailed from England, it may truly be said that he was dying during the whole voyage, though his decline was very gradual till we came to Batavia: the next day I gave Mr. Charles Clerk an order to act as lieutenant in his room, a young man who was extremely well qualified for that station. Our rigging and sails were now become so bad, that something was giving way every day. We continued our course, however, in safety till the 10th of June, when land, which proved to be the Lizard, was discovered by Nicholas Young, the same boy that first saw New Zealand; on the 11th, we run up the channel; at six in the morning of the 12th we passed Beachy Head; at noon we were abreast of Dover, and about three came to an anchor in the Downs, and went ashore at Deal. END OF THE SECOND VOLUME. -------------- Printed by A. and R. Spottiswoode, Printers-Street, London. Footnote 1: