of the officers shot a hawk, which proved to be of the very same sort as our English fishing-hawks.  Several fire-places, branches, and leaves very little decayed, remains of turtle, &c. shewed that people had lately been on the isle.  The hull of a canoe, precisely of the same shape as those we had seen at Balade, lay wrecked in the sand.  We were now no longer at a loss to know of what trees they make their canoes, as they can be no other than these pines.  On this little isle were some which measured twenty inches diameter, and between sixty and seventy feet in length, and would have done very well for a foremast to the Resolution, had one been wanting.  Since trees of this size are to be found on so small a spot, it is reasonable to expect to find some much larger on the main, and larger isles; and, if appearances did not deceive us, we can assert it.

If I except New Zealand, I, at this time, knew of no island in the South Pacific Ocean, where a ship could supply herself with a mast or yard, were she ever so much distressed for want of one.  Thus far the discovery is or may be valuable.  My carpenter, who was a mast-maker as well as a ship-wright, two trades he learnt in Deptford-yard, was of opinion that these trees would make exceedingly good masts.  The wood is white, close-grained, tough, and light.  Turpentine had exuded out of most of the trees, and the sun had inspissated it into a rosin, which was found sticking to the trunks, and lying about the roots.  These trees shoot out their branches like all other pines; with this difference, that the branches of these are much smaller and shorter; so that the knots become nothing when the tree is wrought for use.  I took notice, that the largest of them had the smallest and shortest branches, and were crowned, as it were, at the top, by a spreading branch like a bush.  This was what led some on board into the extravagant notion of their being basaltes:  Indeed no one could think of finding such trees here.  The seeds are produced in cones; but we could find none that had any in them, or that were in a proper state for vegetation or botanical examination.  Besides these, there was another tree or shrub of the spruce-fir kind, but it was very small.  We also found on the isle a sort of scurvy-grass, and a plant, called by us Lamb’s Quarters, which, when boiled, eat like spinnage.

Having got ten or twelve small spars to make studding-sail booms, boat-masts, &c., and night approaching, we returned with them on board.

The purpose for which I anchored under this isle being answered, I was now to consider what was next to be done.  We had from the top-mast-head taken a view of the sea around us, and observed the whole, to the west, to be strewed with small islets, sand-banks, and breakers, to the utmost extent of our horizon.  They seemed indeed not to be all connected, and to be divided by winding channels.  But when I considered that the extent of this S.W. coast was already pretty