On the first recognition of the Anna pink, it seemed quite wonderful to us how the crew of a vessel, which had thus come to the rendezvous two months after us, should be capable of working their ship in the manner they did, and with so little appearance of debility and distress.  This difficulty, however, was soon solved after she came to anchor; for we then found that she had been in harbour since the middle of May, near a month before our arrival at Juan Fernandez, so that their sufferings, excepting the risk they had run of being shipwrecked, were greatly short of what had been undergone by the rest of the squadron.

They fell in with the land on the 16th of May, in lat. 45 deg. 15’ S. being then about four leagues from shore.  On the first sight of it, they wore ship and stood to the southward; but their fore-sail splitting, and the wind being strong at W.S.W. they drove towards the shore.  The captain, either unable to clear the land, or, as others say, resolved to keep the sea no longer, steered now for the coast, in order to look out for some shelter among the many islands which appeared in sight, and had the good fortune to bring the ship to anchor to the eastward of the island of Inchin[1].  But, as they did not run sufficiently near the east shore of that island, and had not hands enough to veer away the cable briskly, they were soon driven to the eastwards, deepening their water from twenty-five to thirty-five fathoms.  Still continuing to drive, they next day, being the 17th May, let go their sheet anchor, which brought them up for a short time:  but on the 18th they drove again, till they came into sixty-five fathoms; and, being now within a mile of the land, they expected every moment to be forced on shore in a place where the coast was so very high and steep, that there was not the smallest prospect of saving the ship and cargo.  As their boats were very leaky, and there was no appearance of a landing place, the whole crew, consisting of sixteen men and boys, gave themselves up for lost, believing, if even any of them happened to get on shore by some extraordinary chance, that they would be almost certainly massacred by the savages; as these people, knowing no other Europeans except Spaniards, might be expected to treat all strangers with the same cruelty which they have so often, and so signally, exercised against their Spanish neighbours.

[Footnote 1:  The island of Inchin and the bay in which the Anna pink took shelter is in lat. 46 deg. 30’ S. long. 74 deg. 30’ in what is called the Peninsula de tres Montes, to the N. of the Golfo de Penas.—­E.]