Page:A voyage round the world, in His Britannic Majesty's sloop, Resolution, commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the years 1772, 3, 4, and 5 (IA b30413849 0001).pdf/154

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tribe. We had long and eagerly wished for the land and its vegetable productions, and therefore could not but eye the prospect before us with peculiar delight, and with emotions of joy and satisfaction which were strongly marked in the countenance of each individual.

About three o'clock in the afternoon, we dropped an anchor under a point of an island, where we were in some measure sheltered from the sea, and so near the shore, as to reach it with a hawser. The sloop was no sooner in safety, than every sailor put his hook and line overboard, and in a few moments numbers of fine fish were hauled upon all parts of the vessel, which heightened the raptures we had already felt at our entrance into this bay. The real good taste of the fish, joined to our long abstinence, inclined us to look upon our first meal here, as the most delicious we had ever made in our lives. The view of rude sceneries in the style of Rosa, of antediluvian forests which cloathed the rock, and of numerous rills of water, which every where rolled down the steep declivity, altogether conspired to complete our joy; and so apt is mankind, after a long absence from land, to be prejudiced in favour of the wildest shore, that we looked upon the country at that time, as one of the most beautiful which nature unassisted by art could produce. Such are the general ideas of travellers and voyagers long exhausted