TRANSCRIPTION
VOYAGE TO THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE
DELIGHTS OF CIRCUMNAVIGATION!
I have thus given a hasty sketch of the general appearance of Napoleon's Land. How many dangerous and arduous labours
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did we endure in the research of these particulars! At two different seasons we visited these dangerous shores : hurricanes and storms, shoals and breakers, us perpetually with destruction, and from which we several times very narrowly escaped. Twice with the Geographer, we attempted to penetrate to the farther part of the Gulf Buonaparte, and twice ww there had nearly perished. The Casuarina, however, reconnoitred the whole of this gulf, eight montlis after this period.
The 13th of April was particularly marked by extreme danger: attacked by dreadful squalls of wind, we were obliged, through the whole of the night, to beat to windard in the east gulf, having several times not more than a few feet water, and drawing six or seven knots.
The night of the 19th of April was still more dreadful. At that time we were in the Gulf Buonaparte: impetuous winds from the W.S.W., blew with terrible violence ; the sky was covered with thick black clouds ; torrents of cold rain, like melted snow, fell, accompanied by flashes of terrific lightning ; the ground swells were so violent and so sudden, that we were obliged to tack continually till day appeared. And happy were we, that we had been able, by dint of incessant labour and exertion, to escape the numerous perils of that dreadful night!
These dangers, however, were not to be compared with the shocking ravages which, the scurvy spread among our people. Several of our men had already been committed to the deep : already more than the half of our seamen were incapable of service: only two of our helmsmen were able to get on deck. The daily increase of this epidemic, was alarming to a extreme degree. And in fact how should it be otherwise? Three quarters of a bottle of stinking water was our daily allowance: for more than a year we had not tasted wine; we had not even a single drop of brandy; for those liquors, so indispensable to European seamen, and particularly in such voyages as ours, was substituted three sixths of a bottle of a bad sort of rum, which is made in the Isle of France, and which is there only used by the black slaves. The biscuit served out to us was full of insects ; all our salt provisions were putrid and rotten ; and both the smell and taste were so offensive, that the almost famished seamen sometimes preferred suffering all the extremities of want itself, to eating these unwholesome provisions, and even in presence of the commander, they often threw their allowance into the sea.... Besides, there were no comforts
of any kind for the sick ; none of the necessaries allowed by authority ; none of those consoling attentions from the superior, which are so grateful to the feelings of all men, and which are certainly great alleviations in times of such painful and afflicting privations were totally unknown. The officers and naturalists, strictly reduced to the same allowance as the seamen, suffered with them the same afflictions of body and mind.
Such was the melancholy state of our ship, when in the morning of the 30th of April, we came in sight of the Ilses St. Pierre and St.. Francois ; eager to get at the back of these islands, and at length resolve the grand question, whether New Holland was really an entire continent or whether there was behind these islands any river that intersected it ? but our attempts for eight days successively wore in vain ; the hurricanes, calms, and currents, alternately drove us from these shores ; and our crew being in so exhausted a state, could only make ineffectual attempts. We were therefore compelled to defer this important discovery to a future time, and endeavour to make the nearest place to refresh.
