PACIFIC AND BEERING'S STRAIT. 219 



planted on this isolated shore, nor are there any ves- chap 

 tiges of its ever having been inhabited, excepting by v— v-* 

 the feathered tribe, a few lizards, soldier-crabs, and ™j: 

 occasionally by turtle. The birds, unaccustomed to 

 molestation, were so ignorant of their danger that 

 we lifted them off their nests ; and the fish suffered 

 as much by our sticks and boat-hooks, as by our 

 fishing-lines. The sharks, as in almost all unin- 

 habited islands within the tropics, were so numerous 

 and daring, that they took the fish off our lines as 

 we were hauling them in, and the next minute were 

 themselves taken by a bait thrown over for them ; a 

 happy thought of our fishermen, who by that means 

 not only recovered many of their hooks, but got 

 back the stolen fish in a tolerably perfect state. 



In several small lakes, occasioned by the sea at 

 times overflowing the land, we saw an abundance of 

 fish of the chastodon and sparus genera, of the same 

 beautiful colours as those at Barrow Island, and in 

 one of them caught a species of gymnothorax about 

 two feet in length. There were but few echini upon 

 the reef, but an abundance of shell-fish, consisting of 

 the area, ostrea, cardium, turbo, helix, conus, cyprea, 

 voluta, harpa, haliotis, patella, &c. ; also several 

 aphrodita? holuthurise (biche la mer) and asterias, &c. 



The position of this island differed so considerably 

 from that of Osnaburgh Island, discovered by Cap- 

 tain Carteret, that I beat two days to the eastward 

 in the parallel of 22° S. in the expectation of finding 

 another ; but when the view from the mast-head 

 extended half a degree beyond the longitude he had 

 assigned to his discovery, and we had not even any 

 indication of land, I gave up further search. The 

 probability, therefore, is, that the island upon which 



