Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/113

Rh being nearer to the ship than we had any reason to hope for. From the ship we found that we had made a half-circle round the hills instead of penetrating, as we thought we had done, into the inner part of the country. With what pleasure we congratulated each other on our safety no one can tell who has not been in such circumstances.

18th. Peter was very ill to-day, and Mr. Buchan not at all well; the rest of us, thank God, in good health, though not yet recovered from our fatigue.

20th. This morning was very fine, so much so that we landed without any difficulty at the bottom of the bay and spent our time very much to our satisfaction in collecting shells and plants. Of the former we found some very scarce and fine, particularly limpets; of several species of these we observed (as well as the shortness of our time would permit) that the limpet with a longish hole at the top of his shell is inhabited by an animal very different from that which has no such hole. Here were also some fine whelks, one particularly with a long tooth, and an infinite variety of Lepades, Sertulariæ, Onisci, etc., in much greater variety than I have anywhere seen. But the shortness of our time would not allow us to examine them, so we were obliged to content ourselves with taking specimens of as many of them as we could in so short a time scrape together.

We returned on board to dinner, and afterwards went about two miles into the country to visit an Indian town, of which some of our people had given us news. We arrived there in about an hour, walking through a path which I suppose was their common road, though it was sometimes up to our knees in mud. The town itself was situated upon a dry knoll among the trees, which had not been at all cleared; it consisted of not more than twelve or fourteen huts or wigwams of the most unartificial construction imaginable; indeed, nothing bearing the name of a hut could possibly be built with less trouble. A hut consisted of a few poles set up and meeting together at the top in a conical figure, and covered on the weather side with a few boughs