PORTER’S JOURNAL. 
145 
may naturally lead us to a consideration of the question concern¬ 
ing* the population of the other islands scattered about the Pacific 
ocean, respecting which so many conjectures have been hazard¬ 
ed. I shall only hazard one, which is briefly this: that former 
ages may have produced men equally as bold and as daring as 
Pat, and women as willing as his tender one to accompany them 
in their adventurous voyages. And when we consider the issue 
which might be produced from an union between a red-haired 
wild Irishman, and a copper-coloured mixt-blooded squaw, we 
need not be any longer surprized at the different varieties in hu¬ 
man nature. 
If Patrick should be liberated from durance, and should ar¬ 
rive with his love at this enchanting spot, perhaps (when neither 
Pat nor the Gallapagos are any longer remembered) some future 
navigator may surprize the world by a discovery of them, and his 
accounts of the strange people with which they may probably be 
inhabited; and from the source from which they shall have 
sprung, it does not seem unlikely that they will have one trait 
in their character, which is common to the natives of all the isl¬ 
ands in the Pacific, a disposition to appropriate to themselves the 
property of others ; and from this circumstance future specula* 
tors may confound their origin with that of all the rest. 
We were little prepared to meet our second disappointment, 
in not finding vessels at Charles’ island, but consoled ourselves 
with the reflection, that we should now soon arrive at Albemarle, 
and that in Banks’ Bay, the general rendezvous, we should find 
an ample reward for all our loss of time, sufferings, and disap¬ 
pointments; and as we had a fine breeze from the east, I made 
all sail, steering west from Charles’ island, to make the south head 
of the island of Albemarle, which was distant from us about 45 
miles, and in the morning found ourselves nearly up with it. 
When we had arrived within eight or nine miles of a point, 
which I have named Point Essex, projecting to the S.W., and 
lying between Point Christopher and Cape Rose, the wind died 
away, and I took my boat and proceeded for the aforesaid point, 
where I arrived in about two hours after leaving the ship, and 
found in a small bay, behind some rocks which terminate th& 
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VOL. I. 
