-west point of
Aiguigan, the distance is about seventeen leagues. These three islands
are between two and three leagues distant from each other; Saypan is the
largest, and Aguigan, which is high and round, the smallest. We steered
along the east side of them, and at noon hauled round the south point of
Tinian, between that island and Aiguigan, and anchored at the south-west
end of it, in sixteen fathom water, with a bottom of hard sand and coral
rock, opposite to a white sandy bay, about a mile and a quarter from the
shore, and about three quarters of a mile from a reef of rocks that lies
at a good distance from the shore, in the very spot where Lord Anson lay
in the Centurion. The water at this place is so very clear that the
bottom is plainly to be seen at the depth of four-and-twenty fathom,
which is no less than one hundred and forty-four feet.

As soon as the ship was secured, I went on shore, to fix upon a place
where tents might be erected for the sick, which were now very numerous;
not a single man being wholly free from the scurvy, and many in the last
stage of it. We found several huts which had been left by the Spaniards
and Indians the year before; for this year none of them had as yet been
at the place, nor was it probable that they should come for some months,
the sun being now almost vertical, and the rainy season set in. After I
had fixed upon a spot for the tents, six or seven of us endeavoured to
push through the woods, that we might come at the beautiful lawns and
meadows of which there is so luxuriant a description in the Account of
Lord Anson's Voyage, and if possible kill some cattle. The trees stood
so thick, and the place was so overgrown with underwood, that we could
not see three yards before us, we therefore were obliged to keep
continually hallooing to each other, to prevent our being separately
lost in this trackless wilderness. As the weather was intolerably hot,
we had nothing on besides our shoes, except our shirts and trowsers, and
these were in a very short time torn all to rags by the bushes and
brambles; at last however, with incredible difficulty and labour, we got
through; but, to our great surprise and disappointment, we found the
country very different from the account, we had read of it: The lands
were entirely overgrown with a stubborn kind of reed or brush, in many
places higher than our heads, and no where lower than our middles, which
continually entangled our legs, and cut us