CETACEANS. 219 



served to retire to some distance, and again rush upon 

 the ship with extreme velocity. His enormous head 

 struck the starboard bow, beating in a corresponding 

 portion of the planks, and the people on board had 

 barely time to take to their boat, before the ship filled 

 with water and fell over on her side. She did not sink, 

 however, for some hours ; and the crew in the boats 

 continued near the wreck until they had obtained a 

 small supply of provisions, when they shaped a course 

 for land ; but here, it is to be regretted, they made 

 a fatal error. At the time the accident happened they 

 were cruising on the Equator, in the longitude of about 

 118 West, with the Marquesan and Society Islands on 

 their lee, and might have sailed in their boats to either 

 of those groups in a comparatively short time. Under 

 an erroneous impression, however, that all those lands 

 were inhabited by an inhospitable race of people, they 

 preferred pulling to windward for the coast of Peru, 

 and in the attempt were exposed for a lengthened 

 period to extreme privations. 



The few of the crew who survived their complicated 

 disasters first made the land at Elizabeth, or Hender- 

 son's Island, a small and uninhabited spot in the South 

 Pacific, and which until then had never been visited by 

 Europeans. After a short continuance here, part of 

 the survivors again put to sea in search of inhabited 

 land, and ultimately reached the coast of South America ; 

 when an English South-Seaman sailed from Valparaiso, 

 and rescued those of the sufferers who had been left to 

 support a precarious existence on Elizabeth Island. By 

 a strange fatality, Captain Pollard, who was amongst 

 the number of survivors, had the misfortune to lose the 

 ship he next commanded, by running her upon a coral 

 reef (then but little known) in the North Pacific. He 



