1803.
October.
some shrubs, and a soil to which the birds are every day making an increase.
Bird Islet being to windward of, and only seven miles distant from our bank, it was frequently visited by the gentlemen during my absence. Besides sea birds of the species already mentioned, they procured many thousand eggs; and also four turtle, of which one weighed 459 pounds, and contained so many eggs, that lieutenant Fowler's journal says no less than 1940, large and small, were counted. These supplies, with shell fish gathered from the reef, and fish, were a great resource, and admitted of a saving in the salt provisions; as the occasional rains, from which several casks were filled, did of their fresh water. The trepang was found on Wreck Reef, and soup was attempted to be made of it; but whether our cooks had not the method of stewing it down, or that the trepang is suited only to the vitiated taste of the Chinese, nothing good was produced.
Oats, maize, and pumpkin seeds were planted upon Wreck-Reef Bank, as also upon Bird Islet; and the young plants had come up, and were in a tolerably flourishing state; some of these may possibly succeed upon the islet, but upon the bank it is scarcely to be hoped. The cocoa nut is capable of resisting the light sprays of the sea which frequently pass over these banks, and it is to be regretted that we had none to plant upon them. A cluster of these majestic and useful palms would have been an excellent beacon to warn mariners of their danger; and in the case where darkness might render them unavailing in this respect, their fruit would at least afford some salutary nourishment to the shipwrecked seamen. The navigator who should distribute ten thousand cocoa nuts amongst the numerous sand banks of the Great Ocean and Indian Sea, would be entitled to the gratitude of all maritime nations, and of every friend to humanity. I may be thought to attribute too much importance to this object in saying, that such a distribution ought to be a leading article, in the instructions for any succeeding voyage of