We continued here till Friday the 15th, and during all that time had one continued storm, with impenetrable fogs, and incessant rain. On the 12th, I sent out the boat, with an officer, to look for harbours on the southern shore: the boat was absent till the 14th, and then returned, with an account that there were five bays between the ship’s station and Cape Upright, where we might anchor in great safety. The officer told me, that near Cape Upright he had fallen in with a few Indians, who had given him a dog, and that one of the women had offered him a child which was sucking at her breast. It is scarcely necessary to say that he refused it, but the offer seems to degrade these poor forlorn savages more than any thing in their appearance or manner of life: it must be a strange depravity of nature that leaves them destitute of affection for their offspring, or a most deplorable situation that impresses necessities upon them by which it is surmounted. Some hills, which, when we first came to this place, had no snow upon them, were now covered, and the winter of this dreary and inhospitable region seemed to have set in at once: the poor seamen not only suffered much by the cold, but had scarcely ever a dry thread about them: I therefore distributed among the crews of both the ships, not excepting the officers, two bales of a thick woollen stuff, called Fearnought, which is provided by the government, so that every body on board had now a warm jacket, which at this time was found both comfortable and salutary.

At eight o’clock in the morning of the 15th, we weighed and made sail, and at three o’clock in the afternoon, we were

Voyaging Accounts