length from the nearest shore.  In the night we had fresh gales westerly, with sudden squalls and hard rain; but in the morning the weather became more moderate, though it was still thick, and the rain continued.  As a great swell set into this place, and broke very high upon the rocks, near which we lay, I got up the anchor, and warped the ship to a bank where the Tamar was riding:  We let go our anchor in fourteen fathom, and moored with the stream anchor to the eastward, in forty-five fathom.  In the bottom of this bay there is a bason, at the entrance of which there is but three fathom and a half at low water, but within there is ten fathom, and room enough for six or seven sail to lie where no wind can hurt them.

We continued here till Friday the 15th, and during all that time had one continued storm, with impenetrable fogs, and incessant rain.  On the 12th, I sent out the boat, with an officer to look for harbours on the southern shore:  The boat was absent till the 14th, and then returned, with an account that there were five bays between the ship’s station and Cape Upright, where we might anchor in great safety.  The officer told me, that near Cape Upright he had fallen in with a few Indians, who had given him a dog, and that; one of the women had offered him a child which was sucking at her breast.  It is scarcely necessary to say that he refused it, but the offer seems to degrade these poor forlorn savages more than any thing in their appearance or manner of life:  It must be a strange depravity of nature that leaves them destitute of affection for their offspring, or a most deplorable situation that impresses necessities upon them by which it is surmounted.  Some hills, which, when, we first came to this place, had no snow upon them, were now covered, and the winter of this dreary and inhospitable region seemed to have set in at once:  The poor seamen not only suffered much by the cold, but had scarcely ever a dry thread about them:  I therefore distributed among the crews of both the ships, not excepting the officers, two bales of a thick woollen stuff, called Fearnought, which is provided by the government, so that every body on board had now a warm jacket, which at this time was found both comfortable and salutary.

At eight o’clock in the morning of the 15th, we weighed and made sail, and at three o’clock in the afternoon, we were once more abreast of Cape Monday, and at five we anchored in a bay on the east side of it.  The pitch of the cape bore N.W. distant half a mile, and the extreme points of the bay from E. to N. by W. We lay at about half a cable’s length from the nearest shore, which was a low island between the ship and the cape.