but land is mentioned in latitude forty-seven degrees forty minutes, expressed in words at length, which exactly answers to the description of what is called Pepys’s Island in the printed account, and which here, he says, he supposed to be the islands of Sebald de Wert.  This part of the manuscript is in the following words:  “January, 1683, This month we were in the latitude of forty-seven degrees and forty minutes, where we espied an island bearing west from us; we having the wind at east north-east, we bore away for it; it being too late for us to go on shore, we lay by all night.  The island seemed very pleasant to the eye, with many woods, I may as well say the whole land was woods.  There being a rock lying above water to the eastward of it, where an innumerable company of fowls, being of the bigness of a small goose, which fowls would strike at our men as they were aloft:  Some of them we killed and eat:  They seemed to us very good, only tasted somewhat fishly.  I sailed along that island to the southward, and about the south-west side of the island there seemed to me to be a good place for ships to ride; I would have had the boat out to have gone into the harbour, but the wind blew fresh, and they would not agree to go with it.  Sailing a little further, keeping the lead, and having six and-twenty and seven-and-twenty fathoms water, until we came to a place where we saw the weeds ride, heaving the lead again, found but seven fathoms water.  Fearing danger went about the ship there; were then fearfull to stay by the land any longer, it being all rocky ground, but the harbour seemed to be a good place for shipps to ride there; in the island, seeming likewise to have water enough, there seemed to me to be harbour for five hundred sail of ships.  The going in but narrow, and the north side of the entrance shallow water that I could see, but I verily believe that there is water enough for any ship to go in on the south side, for there cannot be so great a lack of water, but must needs scoure a channel away at the ebb deep enough for shipping to go in.  I would have had them stood upon a wind all night, but they told me they were not come out to go upon discovery.  We saw likewise another island by this that night, which made me think them to be the Sibble D’wards.”

[Footnote 27:  Bougainville, who had the command of the expedition here referred to, says, “The same illusion which made Hawkins, Woods Rogers, and others believe that these isles were covered with wood, acted likewise upon my fellow voyagers.  We were surprised when we landed, to see that what we took for woods as we sailed along the coast, was nothing but bushes of a tall rush, standing very close together.  The bottom of its stalks being dried, got the colour of a dead leaf to the height of about five feet; and from thence springs the tuft of rushes, which crown this stalk; so that at a distance, these stalks together have the appearance of a wood of middling height.  These rushes only grow near the sea side, and on little isles; the mountains on the main land are, in some parts, covered all over with heath, which are easily mistaken for bushes.”—­Forster’s Translation, where a pretty interesting account of these islands (called Malouines) is to be found.—­E.]