was a remarkably swift
sailer, and, being afterwards employed in the sea-otter trade, is stated
to have made one of the quickest passages ever known from China to the
Sandwich Islands. This memorable little vessel was purchased at Canton
by the late Captain Broughton, to assist him in surveying the coast of
Tartary, and became the means of preserving the crew of his Majesty's
ship _Providence_, amounting to one hundred and twelve men, when wrecked
to the eastward of Formosa, in the year 1797.

The _Pandora_ called at numerous islands without success, but on
Lieutenant Corner having landed on one of the Palmerston's group, he
found a yard and some spars with the broad arrow upon them, and marked
_Bounty_. This induced the captain to cause a very minute search to be
made in all these islands, in the course of which the _Pandora_, being
driven out to sea by blowing weather, and very thick and hazy, lost
sight of the little tender and a jolly boat, the latter of which was
never more heard of. This gives occasion to a little splenetic effusion
from a writer in a periodical journal,[17] which was hardly called for,
'When this boat,' says the writer, 'with a midshipman and several men
(four), had been inhumanly ordered from alongside, it was known that
there was nothing in her but one piece of salt-beef, compassionately
thrown in by a seaman; and horrid as must have been their fate, the
flippant surgeon, after detailing the disgraceful fact, adds--"that this
is the way the world was peopled"--or words to that effect, for we quote
only from memory.' The following is quoted from the book:--

'It may be difficult to surmise,' says the surgeon, 'what has been the
fate of those unfortunate men. They had a piece of salt-beef thrown into
the boat to them on leaving the ship; and it rained a good deal that
night and the following day, which might satiate their thirst. It is by
these accidents the Divine Ruler of the universe has peopled the
southern hemisphere.' This is no more than asserting an acknowledged
fact that can hardly admit of a dispute, and there appears nothing in
the paragraph which at all affects the character of Captain Edwards,
against whom it is levelled.

After a fruitless search of three months, the _Pandora_ arrived, on the
29th August, on the coast of New Holland, and close to that
extraordinary reef of coral rocks called the 'Barrier Reef,' which runs
along the greater part of the eastern coast, but at a cons