for them, after losing much time and labour, to go along the coast in search of anchorage to leeward.  It was not till eleven o’clock next morning that they succeeded in this, when they got to a bay named by him Duclos Bay, after the second in command, where they cast anchor in eight and a half fathom, and an oozy bottom.  This bay is a little to the south of Fresh-Water Bay, and, besides having good anchorage, affords water of an excellent quality, about four hundred yards from the mouth of two rivers, which discharge themselves into it:  No quadrupeds were seen here, and only a very few birds.  At four o’clock on the 16th, they set sail with a pretty favourable wind, but a cloudy sky, passed Point St Anne and Cape Round, the Cape Shutup of others, and brought-to, within a league and a half from Cape Forward, where they were becalmed for two hours.  Between the two points last mentioned, a distance, according to Byron, of seven leagues S.W. by S. course, Bougainville says there are four bays in which a vessel may anchor, and that two of them are separated from each other by a cape of a very singular appearance and structure.  It rises more than 150 feet above the level of the sea, and consists entirely of petrified shells lying in horizontal strata; a line of 100 fathom, it is added, did not reach the bottom of the sea at the foot of it.  This very extraordinary monument of the revolutions which our globe has undergone, does not seem to have been noticed by the geologists.

Cape Forward, or St Isidore, as it has been named by some navigators, and which is the most southerly point of the American continent, lies in lat. 54 deg. 5’ 45”.  It is a perpendicular rock, the top of which is covered with snow, but some trees are to be seen on its sides.  The sea below it is too deep for anchorage; however, between two hillocks which shew on part of its surface, there is a little bay provided with a rivulet, where, in case of necessity, a vessel might anchor in about fifteen fathom.  Having ascertained these and some other matters during the calm which allowed him to use his pinnace, Bougainville returned on board, and set out for Cape Holland.  But the wind veering to S.W., he went in search of the harbour which M. de Gennes named French Bay, and anchored between the two points which constitute its entrance, in ten fathom.  Here he resolved to take in wood and water for his voyage across the Pacific Ocean, as it had been so favourably described by that gentleman, and as he himself was ignorant of the remaining navigation of the straits.  But having ascertained, however, that the anchorage was not safe here, and that the boats could not get up the river, except at high water, he removed eastward to a small bay, in which in 1765, as related in the account of Byron’s voyage, he had taken in wood for the Falkland Islands, and which had been named after him Bougainville’s Bay.  Here then he anchored in twenty-eight fathom, and afterwards warped into the bottom of the bay,