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SURVEY OF THE INTERTROPIC AL 
1819. In the morning, a view from the mast-head 
0 ^ 9 . enabled me to see a confused mass of rocks and 
islets in the S.W. At eight o’clock the flood 
tide commenced, and the anchor being weighed, 
we steered towards the bottom of the gulf ; on 
our way to which, the positions of several small 
rocks and islets, which form a part of this archi- 
pelago, were fixed. At noon our latitude was 
14 ° 7 ' 15 ", when the hill, which we ascended over 
Encounter Cove in Vansittart Bay, was seen 
bearing S. 88 *° E. The land to the southward 
was still far distant, but with a fresh sea breeze 
we made rapid progress towards it, and by four 
o’clock entered an extensive port at the bottom of 
the gulf, and anchored in a bay on its western 
shore, land-locked, in four fathoms and three- 
quarters, mud. In finding this anchorage we 
considered ourselves fortunate, for the freshness 
of the breeze, in so dangerous a situation, made 
me feel uneasy for our only anchor, which we 
must have dropped at night, however exposed 
our situation might have been : by midnight the 
breeze fell, and we had a dead calm. 
10 The next day we landed on the west head of 
the bay, Crystal Head, where the meridional 
altitude of the sun was observed, and sights 
for the chronometers taken ; in the evening we 
