The captain and those who remained with him, now proposed to proceed to the northward in the barge and yawl; but the weather was so bad, and the difficulty of subsisting so great, that it was two months after the departure of the long boat, before they were able to put to sea.  It seems that the place where the Wager was lost, was not a part of the continent, but an island at some distance from the main, affording no other sort of provisions besides shell-fish, and a few herbs; and, as the greatest part of what they had saved out of the wreck had been carried off in the long-boat, the captain and his people were often in extreme want of food, especially as they chose to preserve what little remained to them of the ship’s provisions, to serve them as sea-store, when they should proceed to the northward.  During their residence at this place, which was called Wager Island by the seamen, they were now and then visited by a straggling canoe or two of Indians, who came and bartered their fish and other provisions with our people.  This was some little relief to their necessities, and might perhaps have been greater at another season; for there were several Indian huts on the shore, whence it was supposed that, in some years, many of these savages might resort thither in the height of summer, to catch fish.  Indeed, from what has been related in the account of the Anna pink, it would seem to be the general practice of these Indians, to frequent this coast in the summer season, for the purpose of fishing, and to retire more to the northwards in winter, into a better climate.

It is worthy of remark, how much it is to be lamented that the people of the Wager had no knowledge of the Anna pink being so near them on the coast;[4] for, as she was not above thirty leagues from them at the most, and came into that neighbourhood about the same time that the Wager was lost, and was a fine roomy ship, she could easily have taken them all on board, and have carried them to Juan Fernandez.  Indeed, I suspect that she was still nearer them than is here estimated; for, at different times, several of the people belonging to the Wager heard the report of a cannon, which could be no other than the evening gun fired by the Anna, as formerly mentioned, more especially as the gun heard at Wager Island was at that time of the day.

[Footnote 4:  Inchin island, where the Anna pink lay, has been formerly stated to be in lat. 46 deg. 30’ S. the supposed latitude in which the Wager was lost, stated in the text at 47 deg.  S. is only ten marine leagues to the southward, instead of thirty, and must therefore have been on some one of the islands toward the southern coast of the peninsula de Tres Montes, on the north of the Golfo de Penas.—­E.]