Streight of Magellan to the Islands of Disappointment
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and would fain have fired upon them; but the officer on board, having no permission from me to commit any hostilities, restrained them. I should indeed have thought myself at liberty to have obtained by force the refreshments, for want of which our people were dying, if it had been possible to have come to an anchor, supposing we could not have made these poor savages our friends; but nothing could justify the taking away their lives for a mere imaginary or intentional injury, without procuring the least advantage to ourselves. They were of a deep copper colour, exceedingly stout and well limbed, and remarkably nimble and active, for I never saw men run so fast in my life. This island lies in latitude 14° 5’S., longitude 145° 4’W. from the meridian of London. As the boats reported a second time that there was no anchoring ground about this island, I determined to work up to the other, which was accordingly done all the rest of the day and the following night.
At six o’clock in the morning of the 8th, we brought to on the west side of it, at the distance of about three quarters of a mile from the shore, but we had no soundings with one hundred and forty fathom of line. We now perceived several other low islands, or rather peninsulas, most of them being joined one to the other by a neck of land, very narrow, and almost level with the surface of the water, which breaks high over it. In approaching these islands the cocoa-nut trees are first discovered, as they are higher than any part of the surface. I sent a boat with an officer from each ship to sound the lee-side of these islands for an anchoring-place; and as soon as they left the ship, I saw the Indians run down to the beach in great numbers, armed with long spears and clubs: they kept abreast of the boats as they went sounding along the shore, and used many threatening
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page 95, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv01/131.html