PACIFIC AND BEERING’S STRAIT. 
517 
the plank of the William, upon a substantial foundation of copper bolts, CHAP, 
procured from the wreck of the ship by burning the timbers. They had 
a number of fine fat hogs, a well-stocked pigeon-house, and several gar- June, 
dens, in which there were growing pumpkins, water-melons, potatoes, 
sweet potatoes, and fricoli beans ; and they had planted forty cocoa-nuts 
in other parts of the bay. In such an establishment Wittrein found 
himself very comfortable, and contemplated getting a wife from the 
Sandwich Islands; but I am sorry to find that he soon relinquished 
the idea, and that there is now' no person to take care of the garden, 
which by due management might have become extremely useful to 
W'hale-ships, which are often afflicted with scurvy by their arrival at 
this part of their voyage. The pigs, I have since learned, have become 
wild and numerous, and will in a short time destroy all the roots, if not 
the cabbage-trees, which at the time of our visit were in abundance, 
and, besides being a delicate vegetable, were no doubt an excellent 
antiscorbutic. 
We learned from Wittrein, who had resided eight months upon the 
island, that in January of 1826 it had been visited by a tremendous 
storm, and an earthquake which shook the island so violently, and the 
water at the same time rose so high, that he and his companion, think- 
ing the island about to be swallowed up by the sea, fled to the hills 
for safety. This gale, which resembled the typhoons in the China sea, 
began at north and went round the compass by the westw^ard, blow- 
ing all the while with great violence, and tearing up trees by the roots : 
it destroyed the schooner w hich the crew of the William had began to 
build, and washed the cargo of the ship, which since her wreck had 
been floating about the bay, up into the country. By the appearance 
of some of the casks, the water must have risen twelve feet above the ' 
usual level*. 
We were informed that during winter there is much bad weather 
from the north and north-west; but as summer approaches these wdnds 
abate, and are succeeded by others from the southw'ard and south-east- 
ward, which prevail throughout that season, and are generally attended 
* The seamen affirmed that it rose twenty. 
