this provident care of our commodore, they yet buried above three-fourths of their crew, and a very small proportion of the survivors remained capable of assisting in the duty of the ship.  On getting to anchor, our first care was to assist them in mooring, and the next to get their sick on shore.  These were now reduced, by numerous deaths, to less than fourscore, of which we expected the greatest part to have died; but whether it was that those farthest advanced in the cruel distemper had already perished, or that the vegetables and fresh provisions we had sent had prepared those who remained alive for a more speedy recovery, it so happened, contrary to our fears, that their sick, in general, were relieved and restored to health in a much shorter time than our own had been when we first came to the island, and very few of them died on shore.

Having thus given an account of the principal events relating to the arrival of the Gloucester, in one continued narration, I shall only add, that we were never joined by any other of our ships, except our victualler, the Anna pink, which came in about the middle of August, and whose history I shall defer for the present, as it is now high time, to return to our own transactions, both on board and ashore, during the anxious interval of the Gloucester making frequent and ineffectual attempts to reach the island.

Our next employment, after sending our sick on shore from the Centurion, was cleansing our ship, and filling our water casks.  The former of these measures was indispensably necessary to our future health, as the number of our sick, and the unavoidable negligence arising from our deplorable situation at sea, had rendered the decks most intolerably loathsome.  The filling our water was also a caution that appeared essential to our security, as we had reason to apprehend that accidents might intervene which would oblige us to quit the island at a very short warning, as some appearances we had discovered on shore, at our first landing, gave us grounds to believe that there were Spanish cruizers in these seas, which had left the island only a short time before our arrival, and might possibly return again, either for a supply of water, or in search of us.  For we could not doubt that the sole purpose they had at sea was to intercept us, and we knew that this island was the likeliest place, in their opinion, to meet with us.  The circumstances which gave rise to these reflections, in part of which we were not mistaken, as will appear more at large hereafter, were our finding on shore several pieces of earthen jars, made use of in these seas for holding water and other liquids, which appeared fresh broken.  We saw also many heaps of casks, near which were fish bones and pieces of fish, besides whole fish scattered here and there, which plainly appeared to have been only a short time out of the water, as they were but just beginning to decay.