148 dampier's voyages.
water (though it had a few trees on it, seemingly man- groves), and much of it probably covered at high water, I stood out again in that afternoon, deepning the water, and before night anchored in eight fathom, clean white sand, about the middle of the bay. The next day we got up our anchor, and that afternoon came to an anchor once more near two islands, and a shoal of coral rocks that face the bay. Here I scrubb'd my ship ; and finding it very impro- bable I should get out to sea again, sounding all the way ; but finding by the shallowness of the %vater that there was no going out to sea to the east of the two islands that face the bay, nor between them, I return'd to the west entrance, going out by the same way I came in at, only on the east instead of the west side of the small shoal to be seen in the plan : in which channel we had ten, twelve, and thir- teen fathom water, still deepning upon us till we were out at sea. The day before we came out I sent a boat ashore to the most northerly of the two islands, which is the least of them, catching many small fish in the mean while with hook and line. The boat's crew returning, told me that the isle produces nothing but a sort of green, short, hard, prickly grass, affording neither wood nor fresh water ; and that a sea broke between the two islands, a sign that the water was shallow. They saw a large turtle, and many skates and thornbacks, but caught none.
It was August the 14th, when I sail'd out of this Bay or Sound, the mouth of which lies, as I said, in 25° 5' design- ing to coast along to the N. E. till I might commodiously put in at some other part of N. Holland. In passing out we saw three water-serpents swimming about in the sea, of a yellow colour, spotted with dark brown spots. They were each about four foot long, and about the bigness of a man's wrist, and were the first I saw on this coast, which abounds with several sorts of them. We had the winds at our first coming out at N., and the land lying north-easterly. We
