Page:A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2.djvu/363

Coepang Bay.]

From the first observation on the 11th p.m., the longitude given with the rate from Wreck Reef, was 123° 48′ 34″, or 12′ 48″ too far east; but on using a rate equally accelerated from that found at Wreck Reef to this at Coepang, the time keeper will differ only 0′ 40″ to the east, which is the presumable amount of its irregularities between Oct. 6 at noon and Nov. 11 p.m., or in 36,2 days. The longitudes of my track from Wreck Reef to Timor have been corrected agreeably to the accelerated rate, with the further allowance of a part of the supplemental error 0′ 40″, proportionate to the time of each observation; but in Torres' Strait, the situations are fixed from a medium of the longitudes so obtained and of those of the Investigator with the corrections specified in p. 149 preceding; the difference between them no where exceeding 1½′ of longitude.

On the evening of the 14th we sailed from Coepang, and having passed round the north end of Pulo Samow, steered south-westward with a fair breeze; but the wind being light, and afterwards veering to S.S.W., our progress was slow. At sunset on the 16th, the island Savu was seen to the N.W. by N., and next morning at six o'clock, the following bearings were taken. At noon, the rocky islet bore N. 63° E., and its position was ascertained to be 10° 49½′ south and 122° 49′ east. A small low island is laid down by admiral D'Entrecasteaux, about three leagues to the north-west of this position, and had been previously seen by captain Cook in 1770; it seems possible that these may be one and the same island, for the situation in D'Entrecasteaux's chart is marked doubtful; but they are both laid down in Plate XVI., and such additions made to what little could be distinguished of Savu and Benjoar, as D'Entrecasteaux, Cook, Bligh, and Dalrymple could furnish.

It was my intention on quitting Timor, if the leaky condition of the schooner and the north-west monsoon did not oppose it, to