440 WRECK OF THE CHARLES EATON. 



their long outriggers, projecting 10 or 12 feet on 

 each side of their narrow canoes, prevented them 

 from coming close alongside. 



As soon as they got hold of the rope we gave 

 them, they hauled close up, and a little thin 

 shrivelled old man came scrambling over the 

 tafFrail : he was dressed in a long black serge coat, 

 check shirt, and black trowsers, and as soon as he 

 had regained his breath, after the violent exertions 

 he had made, presented me with a neat little basket 

 containing some papers which he seemed very anxious 

 I should examine. I took them up, rather to please 

 him, than with any expectation of being able to under- 

 stand them, but to my surprise and great interest, 

 found carefully rolled up in several envelopes, two 

 pieces of lead pencil, part of the leaf of a Norie's 

 Navigation Tables, and some scraps of paper, on 

 which, written in pencil, was a rough journal of the 

 proceedings of the men who left the ill-fated Charles 

 Eaton (soon after she was wrecked in Torres 

 Straits,) in one of her cutters, in which they reached 

 this island, and after remaining for thirteen months 

 got to Amboyna in a trading proa, and thence to 

 Batavia, where they gave the following account 

 of their misfortunes to the Resident, Mr. D. W. 

 Pietermaat. 



The Charles Eaton sailed from Sydney on the 

 26th July, 1834, and on the 15th of August, about 

 10 o'clock in the forenoon, during a fresh full sail 

 breeze, the vessel struck on a reef called the De- 

 tached Reef, situated at the entrance of Torres 



