on to
conclude that the people had but just left the place when we arrived. If
we may judge of the people by that which had been their dwelling, they
must stand low even in the scale of savage life: For it was the most
miserable hovel we had ever seen.

While we lay here, having cleared and lightened the ship, we heeled her
so as to come at her leak, which the carpenter stopped as well as he
could; we found the sheathing greatly decayed, and the bottom much eaten
by the worms, but we payed it as far as we could get at it with a
mixture of hot pitch and tar boiled together. The carpenter also cut
down many spars, for studding-sail booms, having but few left of those
which he had brought from England.

English Cove lies N.E. 1/2 N. three or four miles from Wallis's Island;
there is a small shoal on the starboard hand going in, which will be
easily seen by the seas breaking upon it. The water ebbs and flows once
in four-and-twenty hours; the flood came in about nine or ten o'clock,
and it was high water between three and four in the afternoon, after
which it ebbed all night, and was low water about six in the morning.
The water rises and falls between eight and nine feet, sometimes more,
sometimes less; but I doubt whether this fluctuation is not rather the
effect of the sea and land-breeze, than of a regular tide. We anchored
here with our best bower in twenty-seven fathom water, with a bottom of
sand and mud; we veered into the cove a cable and a half from the
anchor, moored head and stern with the stream anchor, and steadied with
hawsers on each bow; the ship then lay in ten fathom, at the distance of
a cable's length from the shore at the bottom of the cove, Wallis's
point bearing S.W. 1/2 S., distant about three or four miles. At this
place there is plenty of excellent wood and water, and good shingle
ballast. The variation was 6 deg. 1/2 E.

On Monday the 7th of September, I weighed anchor, but before I sailed, I
took possession of this country, with all its islands, bays, ports, and
harbours, for his majesty George the Third, king of Great Britain; and
we nailed upon a high tree a piece of board, faced with lead, on which
was engraved the English union, with the name of the ship, and her
commander, the name of the cove, and the time of her coming in and
sailing out of it.[59] While we lay here, I sent the boat out to examine
the harbours upon the coast, from one of which expeditions she returned
with a load of co