On the 29th of May, they lost sight of the land, which had so much but so fruitlessly engaged their attention, and sailed westward with a very fresh south-east wind.  This brought them on the 4th June, to a low flat island, surrounded, by a dangerous shoal, to which with little courtesy, perhaps, to the goddess, was given the name of the Shoal of Diana.  A sand-bank and breakers were discovered on the 6th, and indicated such a dangerous navigation, that Bougainville immediately resolved on altering his course, which he did by steering N.E. by N., abandoning entirely his scheme of proceeding westward, in the latitude of 15 deg..  He justifies this conduct by the reflection, that though he had persevered in his original intention, he must have reached the eastern coast of New Holland, which, estimating it by what Dampier ascertained of the western coast, would have proved both unimportant and inhospitable.  The judicious reader, however, will allow far greater weight to the circumstances of his deficiency for an uncertain navigation, than to such hypothetical reasoning.  He had only bread for two months, and pulse for forty days; and his salt meat had become so bad, that the crew preferred the rats to it, whenever they were fortunate enough to catch them.

The S.E. wind unluckily failing them, their course from the 7th made good, was only N. by E., when on the 10th at day-break, land was seen, bearing from E. to N.W., a delicious smell having previously intimated its vicinity.  This was off the N.E. coast of New Holland, the passage betwixt which and New Britain, Bougainville mistook for a deep gulph or bay, and which of course he had the utmost difficulty to get clear of, with an unfavourable wind, very bad weather, and a great south-eastern swell.  This mistake seems to have occasioned him more danger and much greater hardships than had yet been experienced.  To this imaginary gulph, Bougainville gave the name of Gulph of the Louisiade, and that of Cape Deliverance to its N. or N.N.E. extremity, which he doubled after no less than a fortnight spent in extreme peril and continual fears.  In the morning of the 28th, when about sixty leagues to the northward of this cape, and steering N.E. on the coast of New Britain, he discovered land to the N.W. nine or ten leagues off.  This proved to be two isles, and about the same time there appeared a long high coast, extending to the northward for some distance, and then turning to N.N.W.  His situation was extremely hazardous among these lands, to him altogether unknown, often surrounded with dangerous shoals, and his boats, which were occasionally sent out to sound, being sometimes beset by the natives.  It was not till the 5th of July, that he succeeded in finding any thing like safe anchorage, which he at last effected in Carteret’s Harbour, or, as he calls it, Port Praslin.  It was here, as we have elsewhere related, that he found some vestiges of the Swallow’s residence a short time before.  The situation was far from yielding