PACIFIC AND BEERING’S STRAIT. 
161 
that time it is difficult to distinguish even those which are close to the CHAP, 
surface. 
No cocoa-nut or other fruit trees have yet been planted on this Feb. 
isolated shore, nor are there any vestiges of its ever having been inha- 
bited, excepting by the feathered tribe, a few lizards, soldier-crabs, and 
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 uninhabited 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 fisher- 
men, 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 chaetodon and sparus 
genus, of the same beautiful colours as those at Earrow 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, 
Toluta, harpa, haliotis, patella, &c.; also several aphroditae holuthurim 
(hiche la mer) and asterim, &c. 
The position of this island differed so considerably from that of 
Osnaburgh Island, discovered by Captain 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 
fiad not even any indication of land, I gave up further search. The 
probability, therefore, is, that the island upon which we found the 
''^reck is the Osnaburgh of Captain Carteret ; and as it is equally pro- 
bable, from what has been said, that the remains are those of the 
Matilda, it will be proper henceforward to affix to it the names of both 
Osnaburgh and Matilda. 
A doubt might have arisen with respect to the island discovered 
fo the southward being Osnaburgh Island, had Captain Carteret not 
Y 
