HON. CAPTAIN PHIPPS. 325 



From similar remains being found also upon 

 the Norways, two islands a few miles to the 

 northward of Amsterdam Island, and from the 

 occurrence of a far greater number of graves, 

 bearing nearly the same date, it is likewise pro- 

 bable that the Dutch, who had there also an 

 establishment, had also attempted to pass the 

 winter upon these islands, and that the miser- 

 able beings had shared the same melancholy fate 

 with those on Amsterdam Island. 



It is somewhat remarkable, that so great a 

 mortality should have attended this attempt, 

 provided, as the settlers must have been, with the 

 necessaries of life, when, many years before, a 

 boat's crew of Englishmen, we are told, were cast 

 away upon the same place, and contrived to pass 

 six dreary winters, unprovided with anything but 

 their boat and the clothes they stood in, without 

 losing a man. 



If a conclusion may be drawn from these facts, 

 it is, that the Dutch, having no necessity to labour 

 during the winter, shut themselves up in their 

 huts, and thereby generated the disposition to 

 scurvy, to which fresh air and exercise are so 

 great an antidote ; whilst the English, compelled 

 by necessity to wander out in the depth of winter 

 to collect even their fire-wood from the drift tim- 

 ber upon the beach, were driven to the use of 



A.D. 



1773. 



