A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 eBook

Robert Kerr (writer)
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 783 pages of information about A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11.

A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 eBook

Robert Kerr (writer)
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 783 pages of information about A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11.
anchor, forced us off the bank, and drove the ship out to sea a second time.  The commodore, it is true, and the principal officers, were now on board; but we had near seventy men on shore, who had been employed in filling our water, and procuring provisions:  These had with them our two cutters; but as they were too many for the cutters to bring off at once, we sent the eighteen-oared barge to assist them; and at the same time made a signal for all that could to embark.  The two cutters soon came off to us full of men; but forty of the company, who were employed in killing cattle in the wood, and in bringing them down to the landing-place, were left behind; and though the eighteen-oared barge was left for their conveyance, yet, as the ship soon drove to a considerable distance, it was not in their power to join us.  However, as the weather was favourable, and our crew was now stronger than when we were first driven out, we, in about five days time, returned again to an anchor at Tinian, and relieved those we had left behind us from their second fears of being deserted by their ship.

[Footnote 1:  The original contains also a description of the Ladrones (or Marian Islands, as they are now usually called,) which, for a reason before mentioned, is omitted.]

On our arrival, we found that the Spanish bark, the old object of their hopes, had undergone a new metamorphosis:  For those we had left onshore began to despair of our return, and conceiving that the lengthening the bark, as formerly proposed, was both a toilsome and unnecessary measure, considering the small number they consisted of, they had resolved to join her again, and to restore her to her first state; and in this scheme they had made some progress; for they had brought the two parts together, and would have soon completed her, had not our coming back put a period to their labours and disquietudes.

These people we had left behind informed us, that, just before we were seen in the offing, two proas had stood in very near the shore, and had continued there for some time; but, on the appearance of our ship, they crowded away, and were presently out of sight.  And, on this occasion, I must mention an incident, which, though it happened during the first absence of the ship, was then omitted, to avoid interrupting the course of the narration.

It hath been already observed, that a part of the detachment, sent to this island under the command of the Spanish Serjeant, lay concealed in the woods; and we were the less solicitous to find them out, as our prisoners all assured us, that it was impossible for them to get off, and consequently that it was impossible for them to send any intelligence about us to Guam.  But when the Centurion drove out to sea, and left the commodore on shore, he one day, attended by some of his officers, endeavoured to make the tour of the island:  In this expedition, being on a rising ground, they perceived in the valley beneath

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A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.