sailing with a southerly wind, and because I thought it the best situation for watering; but I afterwards found a very fine stream on the north shore, in the first sandy cove within the island, before which a ship might lie almost land-locked, and procure wood as well as water in great abundance. Wood, indeed, is every where plenty, but I saw only two kinds which may be considered as timber. These trees are as large, or larger, than the English oak, and one of them has not a very different appearance; this is the same that yields the reddish gum like _sanguis draconis_, and the wood is heavy, hard, and dark-coloured, like _lignum vitæ_: the other grows tall and straight, something like the pine; and the wood of this, which has some resemblance to the live oak of America, is also hard and heavy. There are a few shrubs, and several kinds of the palm: mangroves also grow in great plenty near the head of the bay. The country in general is level, low, and woody, as far as we could see. The woods, as I have before observed, abound with birds of exquisite beauty, particularly of the parrot kind: we found also crows here, exactly the same with those in England. About the head of the harbour, where there are large flats of sand and mud, there is great plenty of water-fowl, most of which were altogether unknown to us; one of the most remarkable was black and white, much larger than a swan, and in shape somewhat resembling a pelican. On these banks of sand and mud there are great quantities of oysters, muscles, cockles, and other shell-fish, which seem to be the principal subsistence of the inhabitants, who go into shoal water with their little canoes, and pick them out with their hands. We did not observe that they eat any of them raw, nor do they always go on shore to dress them, for they have frequently fires in their canoes for that purpose. They do not, however, subsist wholly upon this food, for they catch a variety of other fish, some of which they strike with gigs, and some they take with hook and line. All the inhabitants that we saw were stark naked; they did not appear to be numerous, nor to live in societies, but, like other animals, were scattered about along the coast, and in the woods. Of their manner of life, however, we could know but little, as we were never able to form the least connection with them: after the first contest at our landing, they would never come near enough to parley; nor did they touch a single article of all that we had left at their huts, and the places they frequented, on purpose for them to take away. During my stay in this harbour I caused the English colours to be displayed on shore every day, and the ship’s name, and the date of the year, to be inscribed upon one of the trees near the watering-place. It is high-water here at the full and change of the moon about eight o’clock, and the tide rises and falls perpendicularly between four and five feet. CHAP. II.