In our return I visited the Tomb or Bier in which was deposited the body of the man who was shot. I lifted up the cloth and saw part of the body already dropping to peices with putrefaction about him and indeed within all parts of his flesh were abundance of maggots of a species of Beetle very comon here.

Such an advance of putrefaction in 8 days for it was no more since he was shot is almost past credit but what will not a hot climate and plenty of insects do.

We had this evening some conversation about an ax which was brought in the morning by Hercules, it wanting grinding. Its make was very different from that of our English ones, several gentlemen were of opinion that it was a French one, some went so far as to give it as their opinion that some other ship had been here since the Dolphin. The difficulty however appeard to me at least easily solvd by supposing axes to have been taken in the Dolphin as trade, in which case old ones might have been bought of the make of any countrey, for many such I suppose there are in every old iron shop in London.

Voyaging Accounts