Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/100

78 that we had made little way when night came. From the place where we came to an anchor we reckoned now we had not above a couple of leagues to the extremity of the strait: but we were so delayed by the winds and currents, that it was four days longer, before we could clear it.

In this interval the barge, which the Generel had dispatched for the purpose of making geographical researches, returned after five days absence. Citizen Beaupré had discovered several bays before unknown: the farthest to the north extended to 42° 42′ of S. lat., and the easternmost reached to the longitude of Cape Pillar. He had seen the channel, which separates the Island of Maria from the main land.

It was with astonishment we saw the prodigious number of sheltered situations, which, from Cape South to the meridian of Cape Pillar, offer a continued chain of excellent anchoring places, in a space including about sixteen leagues from east to west, and about twenty from north to south.

Fresh water appears to be very scarce in these bays at this season: yet near the head of that, which stretches farthest to the north, there is a river, where, about fifty paces distant from its mouth, there is perfectly fresh water of the depth of six feet, even within an hour after flood-tide;