232 cook's voyage to feb. 



with a stock of food and water scarcely sufficient 

 to preserve life. Here they might always have found 

 plenty, and have been within a month's sure sail of 

 the very part of California, which the Manilla ship is 

 obliged to make, or else have returned to the coast of 

 America, thoroughly refitted, after an absence of 

 two months. How happy would Lord Anson have 

 been, and what hardships would he have avoided, if 

 he had known that there was a group of islands, half 

 way between America and Tinian, where all his 

 wants could have been effectually supplied, and in 

 describing which, the elegant historian of that voy- 

 age would have presented his reader with a more 

 agreeable picture than I have been able to draw in 

 this chapter? 



