What follows now is little more than a journal of the voyage, rendered for the most part tedious by description and by the introduction of incidents of little or no interest. Dampier's name seldom occurs; when it is mentioned it is always in reference to something that helps to accentuate characteristics noticeable in his own account of his adventures. For instance, in April, when they were off a point of land which they took to be the north-east point of Celebes, the vessel was proving very leaky; which, added to the general ignorance of the ship's situation, filled the crew with melancholy and irritation. “Captain Dampier,” says Rogers, “discouraged us very much: He had been twice here, and therefore what he said among the Seamen passed without Dispute, and he laid it down as a thing certain that if we could not reach Ternate or find the Island of Tula it was impossible for us to get any Refreshment, there being nothing to be met with on the Coast of New Guiney.” It had been thus with Dampier whilst buccaneering off the New Holland shore; thus had it been with him too when hunting for water on the sand-hills of the Western Australian seaboard, his foot on the margin of a vast region of earth which he had neither temper nor heart to explore, though he had travelled many thousands of miles in a crazy ship and with a troublesome crew for no other purpose. This trick of discouraging the people he led, or was one of, is the secret of his failure as a commander and explorer. Rogers, a bolder and more hopeful, and certainly in many respects an equally sagacious man, was not likely to feel grateful for Dampier's melancholy shakes of the head, and his gloomy, prognosticating countenance; but his own experiences left him nothing to say, for though the ships spent the best part of the month of May off the coast of New Guinea, all that Rogers could observe that seemed to him worth mentioning was, “It is most certain these Islands, which are scattered through the Streights, and few or none of which are peopled, would all of them bear Spice, and afford immense Riches to this Nation, if they were settled.”