Streight of Magellan to Otaheite
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board. At noon, I hoisted the boats in, and there being a great sea, with a dreadful surf rolling in upon the shore, and no anchorage, I thought it prudent to leave this place, with such refreshments as we had got. The people who had resided on shore, saw no appearance of metal of any kind, but several tools, which were made of shells and stones, sharpened and fitted into handles, like adzes, chissels, and awls. They saw several canoes building, which are formed of planks, sewed together, and fastened to several small timbers, that pass transversely along the bottom and up the sides. They saw several repositories of the dead, in which the body was left to putrefy under a canopy, and not put into the ground.
When we sailed, we left a union jack flying upon the island, with the ship’s name, the time of our being here, and an account of our taking possession of this place, and Whitsun Island, in the name of his Britannic Majesty, cut on a piece of wood, and in the bark of several trees. We also left some hatchets, nails, glass bottles, beads, shillings, sixpences, and halfpence, as presents to the natives, and an atonement for the disturbance we had given them. Queen Charlotte’s Island is about six miles long, and one mile wide, lies in latitude 19° 18’S. longitude, by observation, 138° 4’W. and we found the variation here to be 4° 46’E.
We made sail with a fine breeze, and about one o’clock, saw an island W. by S. Queen Charlotte’s Island, at this time bearing E. by N. distant 15 miles. At half an hour after three, we were within about three quarters of a mile of the east end of the island, and ran close along the shore, but had no soundings. The east and west ends are joined to each other by a reef of rocks, over which the sea breaks into a lagoon, in the middle of the island, which, therefore, had
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page 428, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv01/428.html