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262 equivalent, but insisted on having our goods delivered to them before hand, which they kept, refusing to give us any thing in return.

About eight o'clock in the morning, the General sent two boats to sound a creek, which we perceived at about a mile distance to the north-west. On a sudden we lost sight of them, and were under some apprehensions respecting them, when, about noon they appeared again at the mouth of the creek, which they had been to reconnoitre. Several musket-shot fired from these boats gave us to understand that they had been attacked by the savages. At the report, the canoes which surrounded us made off with great precipitation. Our boats were not long before they arrived, and informed us that the opening which we had taken for a bay, was the extremity of a channel, which separates the island of St. Croix from that of New Jersey. This channel extends in length N.E. ¼ E. being at the utmost not three miles long, and its greatest breadth does not exceed one mile. It was sounded with great accuracy, and a line of sixty-seven yards did not find the bottom in any part of at, not even within an hundred yards of the shore.

A great number of canoes had followed our boats, whilst large parties of savages on the shore endeavoured to entice our people to them, by