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 considerable distance from it.  The boat had been sent out to look for an opening, which was soon discovered, but in the course of the night the ship had drifted past it.  ‘On getting soundings,’ says Captain Edwards, in his narrative laid before the court-martial, ’the topsails were filled; but before the tacks were hauled on board and other sail made and trimmed, the ship struck upon a reef; we had a quarter less two fathoms on the larboard side, and three fathoms on the starboard side; the sails were braced about different ways to endeavour to get her off, but to no purpose; they were then clewed up and afterwards furled, the top-gallant yards got down and the top-gallant masts struck.  Boats were hoisted out with a view to carry out an anchor, but before that could be effected the ship struck so violently on the reef, that the carpenter reported she made eighteen inches of water in five minutes; and in five minutes after this, that there were four feet of water in the hold.  Finding the leak increasing