This Island Does Not Exceed
Three Miles Long By Two In Breadth; Yet, In My Opinion, No Island In The
World Is More Frequented By Seals And Fowls Than This, Which Abounds
With Penguins, Wild-Geese, Ducks, Pelicans, And Various Other Fowls.
You
may drive 500 penguins together in a flock, and the seals are in
thousands together on the shore.
Having well refreshed our men, and
bought some cattle, we weighed anchor about four in the morning of the
29th July, and came out of the roads with very little wind, all our men
in perfect health, yet loth to depart without the company of our other
two ships. But all our business being ended, and being quite uncertain
as to their arrival,[264] we made no farther stay, and directed our
course for the island of St Lawrence or Madagascar.
[Footnote 264: The other two ships under Keeling did not arrive at
Saldanha bay till the 17th December, five months afterwards. - E.]
The 30th was calm all day, till three in the afternoon, when we had a
fresh gale at S.W. with which we passed the Cape of Good Hope by ten at
night. The 1st August we were off Cape Aguillas; and on the 27th we saw
the island of Madagascar, some six leagues off. In the afternoon of the
30th we anchored in the bay of St Augustine, in six and a half fathoms
on coarse gravel. In consequence of a great ledge of rocks off the mouth
of the bay, we fell to room-wards, [leeward,] of the road, and had to
get in upon a tack, having seven, six and a half, and five fathoms all
the way, and on coming to anchor had the ledge and two islands to
windward of us.
The 31st, our captain and Mr Davis went in the longboat to view the
islands, and I myself as we went sounded close by the ledge, and had six
fathoms. One of the islands is very small, as it were a mere bank of
sand with nothing on it. The other is about a mile long, and half a mile
broad, and has nothing upon it but some small store of wood. The 1st
September, we weighed from our first anchorage, the ground being foul,
so that our cable broke, and we lost an anchor in weighing, and came
within two miles of the mouth of the river, where we anchored in five
and a half fathoms fast ground, about three leagues from oar former
anchorage. We got here plenty of sheep and beeves for little money, and
having taken in wood and water, we weighed anchor on the 7th, taking to
sea with us four goats, three sheep, and a heifer. We had an observation
three miles from the island, before the bay of St Augustine, which we
made to be in lat. 23 deg. 48' S.[265]
[Footnote 265: The tropic of Capricorn runs through the bay of St
Augustine, being 23 deg.
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