COASTS OF AUSTRALIA. 
91 
Bay and Cape Lev^que, had produced their bad i82i. 
effects upon the constitutions of our people. Every Aug. 20. 
means were taken to prevent sickness : preserved 
meats were issued two days in the week in lieu 
of salt provisions ; and this diet, with the usual 
proportions of lemon-juice and sugar, proved 
so good an anti- scorbutic that, with a few trifling 
exceptions^ no case of scurvy occurred. Our dry 
provisions had suffered much from rats and cock- 
roaches; but this was not the only way these 
vermin annoyed us, for, on opening a keg of 
musquet-ball cartridges, we found, out of 750 
rounds, more than half the number quite de- 
stroyed, and the remainder so injured as to be 
quite useless. 
The following day we made very little pro- 21. 
gress, from light winds in the morning and a 
dead calm the whole of the evening. At sunset 
we anchored at about four miles from the shore, 
in seventeen fathoms sandy ground. 
During the afternoon we were surrounded by 
an immense number of whales, leaping out of 
the water and thrashing the sea with their 
fins ; the noise of which, from the calmness and 
perfect stillness of the air, was as loud as the re- 
port of a volley of musquetry. Some remom were 
also swimming about the vessel the whole day, 
and a snake about four feet long, of a yellowish 
