Page:Colnett - Voyage to the South Pacific (IA cihm 33242).djvu/119

 four fathoms from the urface of the ea, and is nearly perpendicular. On ounding all around, at a boats length, we had thirty-five fathoms; and, at half a mile ditance, fifty fathoms; and then no bottom, with an hundred fathoms of line. It hews itelf, on every bearing of the compas, from a mall to a great ditance, like a ail under a jury-mat. This rock is ituated in Latitude 19° 4′ 30″ and Longitude, by obervation of Sun and Moon, and chronometer, corrected, 111° 6′ 30″, bearing from the South Wet end of Ile Socoro, Wet 15° North, by compas; ditant forty-eight miles: the variation, 7° Eat. I leave the further decriptions of Iles Socoro and Santo Berto, to my return and anchoring at the firt mentioned ile, when I had a better opportunity, and more time to make remarks.

At Rocka Partida was a prodigious quantity of fih, but we caught only few, as the harks detroyed our hooks and lines, and no one on board, but myelf, had ever before een them o ravenous. One of our men reaching over the gun-whale of the boat, a hark of eighteen or twenty feet in length, roe out of the water to eize his hand, a circumtance not uncommon at the Sandwich Iles, where I have een a large hark take hold of an outrigger of a canoe, and endeavour to overet it. This was in ome degree the cae with our boat; a number of them continually eizing the teering oar, it became of no ue, o that we were obliged to lay it in. The inhabitants of the rock were,