Plymouth to Madeira and the Streight of Magellan
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The little bay where we were now at anchor, lies about three leagues E. by S. from Cape Pillar: it is the first place which has any appearance of a bay within that Cape, and bears S. by E. about four leagues from the island which Sir John Narborough called Westminster Hall, from its resemblance to that building in a distant view. The western point of this bay makes a very remarkable appearance, being a perpendicular plane like the wall of a house. There are three islands about two cables' length within its entrance, and within those islands a very good harbour, with anchorage in between twenty-five and thirty fathom, with a bottom of soft mud. We anchored without the islands, the passage on each side of them being not more than one-fourth of a cable's length wide. Our little bay is about two cables' length broad, the points bearing east and west of each other: in the inner part there is from sixteen to eighteen fathom, but where we lay it is deeper; we had one anchor in seventeen fathom, and the other in forty-five, with great over-falls between them, and rocks in several places. Here we rode out a very hard gale, and the ground being extremely uneven, we expected our cables to be cut in two every minute, yet when we weighed, to our great surprize, they did not appear to have been rubbed in any part, though we found it very difficult to heave them clear of the rocks. The land round this bay and harbour is all high, and as the current sets continually into it, I doubt not but it has another communication with the sea to the south of Cape Deseada. The Master said he went up it four miles in a boat, and could not then be above four miles from the Western Ocean, yet I still saw a wide entrance to the S.W. The landing is every where good, there is plenty of wood and water, and muscles and wild geese in abundance.
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page 533, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv01/533.html