Island might, in the MS. from which the account of Cowley's
voyage was printed, be expressed in figures, which, if ill made, might
equally resemble forty-seven, and fifty-one; and therefore as there is
no island in these seas in latitude forty-seven, and as Falkland's
Islands lie nearly in fifty-one, that fifty-one might reasonably be
concluded to be the number for which the figures were intended to stand:
Recourse therefore was had to the British Museum, and a manuscript
journal of Cowley's was there found. In this manuscript no mention is
made of an island not before known, to which he gave the name of Pepys's
Island, but land is mentioned in latitude forty-seven degrees forty
minutes, expressed in words at length, which exactly answers to the
description of what is called Pepys's Island in the printed account, and
which here, he says, he supposed to be the islands of Sebald de Wert.
This part of the manuscript is in the following words: "January, 1683,
This month we were in the latitude of forty-seven degrees and forty
minutes, where we espied an island bearing west from us; we having the
wind at east north-east, we bore away for it; it being too late for us
to go on shore, we lay by all night. The island seemed very pleasant to
the eye, with many woods, I may as well say the whole land was woods.
There being a rock lying above water to the eastward of it, where an
innumerable company of fowls, being of the bigness of a small goose,
which fowls would strike at our men as they were aloft: Some of them we
killed and eat: They seemed to us very good, only tasted somewhat
fishly. I sailed along that island to the southward, and about the
south-west side of the island there seemed to me to be a good place for
ships to ride; I would have had the boat out to have gone into the
harbour, but the wind blew fresh, and they would not agree to go with
it. Sailing a little further, keeping the lead, and having six
and-twenty and seven-and-twenty fathoms water, until we came to a place
where we saw the weeds ride, heaving the lead again, found but seven
fathoms water. Fearing danger went about the ship there; were then
fearfull to stay by the land any longer, it being all rocky ground, but
the harbour seemed to be a good place for shipps to ride there; in the
island, seeming likewise to have water enough, there seemed to me to be
harbour for five hundred sail of ships. The going in but narrow, and the
north side of the entrance shal