Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/456

428 the casks had been cleansed. There remained enough of the fermentative principle of the old water, quickly to corrupt the new.

It is certainly very disagreeable to be obliged to drink the corrupted water of salt marshes; but it is encouraging to know that by agitating it some minutes, as I have shown, it resumes its original purity.

At half an hour past four A.M. we saw, by star light, the island of Savu, extending from W. 13° S. to S. 27° W. at the distance of 1,000 toises. We steered west, in order to pass to the northward of that little island; and about half past nine, we were a-breast of the bay in which Captain Cook anchored, in his second voyage, after having passed Endeavour Straits. We distinguished five canoes plying very near the shore, where they were sheltered from the waves, which spent their force upon a little reef, level with the water.

The island of Savu presents an enchanting prospect; being intersected, especially towards the south-west, by very beautiful hills, whose gentle declivity seems to offer to the natives a soil of easy and favourable cultivation.

Groups of cocoa-nut trees scattered on the shore, afford shelter to some cottages, which additionally embellish those charming plantations. That