Yet Miago had a decided and most inexplicable advantage over all on board, and that in a matter especially relating to the science of navigation:  he could indicate at once and correctly the exact direction of our wished-for harbour, when neither sun nor stars were shining to assist him.  He was tried frequently, and under very varying circumstances, but strange as it may seem, he was invariably right.  This faculty—­though somewhat analogous to one I have heard ascribed to the natives of North America—­had very much surprised me when exercised on shore, but at sea, out of the sight of land, it seemed beyond belief, as assuredly it is beyond explanation:  but I have sometimes thought that some such power must have been possessed by those adventurous seamen who, long before the discovery of the compass, ventured upon distant and hazardous voyages.

I used sometimes, as we approached the land of his nativity, to question him upon the account he intended to give his friends of the scenes he had witnessed, and I was quite astonished at the accuracy with which he remembered the various places we had visited during the voyage:  he seemed to have carried the ship’s track in his memory with the most careful accuracy.  His description of the ship’s sailing and anchoring were most amusing:  he used to say, “Ship walk—­walk—­all night—­hard walk—­then by and by, anchor tumble down.”  His manner of describing his interviews with the “wicked northern men,” was most graphic.  His countenance and figure became at once instinct with animation and energy, and no doubt he was then influenced by feelings of baffled hatred and revenge, from having failed in his much-vaunted determination to carry off in triumph one of their gins.  I would sometimes amuse myself by asking him how he was to excuse himself to his friends for having failed in the premised exploit, but the subject was evidently a very unpleasant one, and he was always anxious to escape from it.

In spite of all Miago’s evocations for a change of wind we did not see Rottnest Island before the morning of the 25th.  The ship’s track on the chart after passing the North-West Cape, resembled the figure seven, the tail pointing towards the north.  We passed along the south side of Rottnest, and by keeping its south-western extreme shut in with the south point, cleared the northern end of the foul ground extending North-North-West from a cluster of high rocks called the Stragglers.

RETURN TO SWAN RIVER.

As Gage Road was not considered safe at this time of the year, the ship was taken into Owen’s anchorage under the guidance of Mr. Usborne.  We first steered for the Mew Stone, bearing south, until the leading marks could be made out; they are the western of two flat rocks lying close off the west side of Carnac Island and a large white sand patch on the north side of Garden Island.  The rock must be kept its own breadth open to the eastward of the highest part of the patch; these marks lead over a sort of bar or ridge of sand in 3 and 3 1/2 fathoms; when the water deepened to 5 and 7 fathoms, the course was then changed to East-South-East for a patch of low cliffs about two miles south of Fremantle, which brought us up to Owen’s anchorage in 7 and 8 fathoms, passing between Success and Palmelia Banks.