EXPLORATION BY SEA. 173 harbours, in the latitude of 30° south,* they described to be of 1791 superior excellence and capacity. Here they hauled their bark ashore, paid her seams with tallow, and repaired her. But it was with difficulty they could keep off the attacks of the Indians. Attacked by These people continued to harass them so much that they quitted the mainland and reti*eated to a small island in the harbour, where they completed their design. Between the latitude of 26" and 27°, they wore driven by a current thirty leagues from the shore among some islands, where they found plenty of large turtles. Soon after they closed again with the continent, where the boat got entangled with the surf and was driven on shore, and they had all ^">'en on well nigh perished. They passed through the Straits of Endea- vour, and beyond the Gulf of Carpentaiia found a large fresh- water river which they entered, and filled from it their empty Until they reached the Gulf, they saw no natives or canoes differing from those about Port Jackson ; but now they were chased by chased by large canoes, fitted with sails and fighting-stages, and ^ ^^ capable of holding thirty men each. They escaped by dint of row- ing to windward. On the 5th of June, 1791, they reached Timor.f Here they were received with kindness by the Dutch, until the arrival of Captain Edwards, of H.M.S. Pandora, at Timor, led to their detection, when they were immedi- ately arrested, lodged in prison, and afterwards handed over to him to be conveyed to England. Tench notices, as a »pture a peculiar comcidence, that the woman and one of the men den<»- were in the same ship as himself when the First Fleet sailed for Botany Bay; and that on the arrival of H.M.S. Gorgon, in which he was a passenger, at the Cape of Good Hope in March, 1792, they were put on board that ship to be taken back to England for trial. On the wreck of the Pandora during her voyage in search Boat voyage of the Bounty mutineers, the oflScers and crew who had Pandora's escaped from the wreck, to the number of ninety-two, with ten prisoners, made a voyage of eleven hundred miles in • Either Shoal Bay, latitude 29° 43' south, discovered by Flinders in 1799, or Port Macquarie, latitude 31° 25' 45 south, discovered by Oxlcy in 1828. t Complete Account, p. 108. Digitized by Google
