or brush, in many places higher than our heads, and no where lower than our middles, which continually entangled our legs, and cut us like whipcord; our stockings perhaps might have suffered still more, but we wore none.  During this, march we were also covered with flies from head to foot, and whenever we offered to speak we were sure of having a mouthful, many of which never failed to get down our throats.  After we had walked about three or four miles, we got sight of a bull, which we killed, and a little before night got back to the beach, as wet as if we had been dipt in water, and so fatigued that we were scarcely able to stand.  We immediately sent out a party to fetch the bull, and found that during our excursion some tents had been got up, and the sick brought on shore.

The next day our people were employed in setting up more tents, getting the water-casks on shore, and clearing the well at which they were to be filled.  This well I imagined to be the same that the Centurion watered at; but it was the worst that we had met with during the voyage, for the water was not only brackish, but full of worms.  The road also where the ships lay was a dangerous situation at this season, for the bottom is hard sand and large coral rocks, and the anchor having no hold in the sand, the cable is in perpetual danger of being cut to pieces by the coral; to prevent which as much as possible, I rounded the cables, and buoyed them up with empty water-casks.  Another precaution also was taught me by experience, for at first I moored, but finding the cables much damaged, I resolved to lie single for the future, that by veering away or heaving in, as we should have more or less wind, we might always keep them from being slack, and consequently from rubbing, and this expedient succeeded to my wish.  At the full and change of the moon, a prodigious swell tumbles in here, so that I never saw ships at anchor roll so much as ours did while we lay here; and it once drove in from the westward with such violence, and broke so high upon the reef, that I was obliged to put to sea for a week; for if our cable had parted in the night, and the wind had been upon the shore, which sometimes, happens for two or three days together, the ship must have inevitably been lost upon the rocks.

As I was myself very ill with the scurvy, I ordered a tent to be pitched for me, and took up my residence on shore; where we also erected the armourer’s forge, and began to repair the iron-work of both the ships.  I soon found that the island produced limes, sour oranges, cocoa-nuts, breadfruit,[42] guavas, and paupas in great abundance; but we found no water-melons, scurvy-grass, or sorrel.

[Footnote 42:  See a particular description of the bread-fruit, in the 8th chapter of Lieut.  Cook’s voyage.]