the ships, and at seven o'clock in the morning brought-to off the
inlet. I immediately sent the boats on shore in search of refreshments,
and made all the men who were not so ill of the scurvy as to be laid up,
go in them; I also went on shore myself, and continued there the whole
day. We saw many houses or wigwams of the natives, but they were totally
deserted, except by the dogs, who kept an incessant howling from the
time we came on shore till we returned to the ship: They were low mean
hovels, thatched with cocoa-nut branches; but they were most
delightfully situated in a fine grove of stately trees, many of which
were the cocoa-nut, and many such as we were utterly unacquainted with.
The cocoa-nut trees seem to furnish them with almost all the necessaries
of life; particularly food, sails, cordage; timber, and vessels to hold
water; so that probably these people always fix their habitations where
the trees abound. We observed the shore to be covered with coral, and
the shells of very large pearl oysters; so that I make no doubt but that
as profitable a pearl fishery might be established here as any in the
world. We saw but little of the people, except at a distance; we could
however perceive that the women had a piece of cloth of some kind,
probably fabricated of the same stuff as their sail, hanging from the
waist as low as the knee; the men were naked.

Our people, in rummaging some of the huts, found the carved head of a
rudder, which--had manifestly belonged to a Dutch long-boat, and was
very old and worm-eaten. They found also a piece of hammered iron, a
piece of brass, and some small iron tools, which the ancestors of the
present inhabitants of this place probably obtained from the Dutch ship
to which the long-boat had belonged, all which I brought away with me.
Whether these people found means to cut off the ship, or whether she was
lost upon the island, or after she left it, cannot be known; but there
is reason to believe that she never returned to Europe, because no
account of her voyage, or of any discoveries that she made, is extant.
If the ship sailed from this place in safety, it is not perhaps easy to
account for her leaving the rudder of her long-boat behind her: And if
she was cut off by the natives, there must be much more considerable
remains of her in the island, especially of her iron-work, upon which
all Indian nations, who have no metal, set the highest value; we had no
opportunities however to