dezvous, and to this place the commander of the Wager, Capt. Cheap, endeavored to steer; but, owing to his obstinacy, and to the difficulty of navigating in those unknown seas, he failed in this attempt. The storm continued, while the ship's distress increased, until at length she was blown upon a lee shore, where she struck between two rocks. The narrative published by Mr. Byron after his return is, perhaps, one of the most interesting books of the kind which the language contains. The late Lord Byron has made ample use of it in the course of his singular poem of Don Juan,' as we shall hereafter take occasion to remark; and has alluded to it by saying that the hardships which his hero suffered were →Comparative To those related in his grand-dad's narrative.' The description given by Mr. Byron of the wreck has great power, and conveys with the least effort a striking picture of that appaining event :— • In this dreadful situation she (the ship) lay for some little time, every soul on board looking upon the present minute as his last; for there was nothing to be seen but breakers all around us. However, a mountainous sea hove her off from thence; but she presently struck again, and broke her tiller. In this terrifying and critical juncture, to have observed all the various modes of horror operating according to the several characters and complexions amongst us, it was necessary that the observer himself should have been free from all impressions of danger. Instances there were, however, of behaviour so very remarkable, they could not escape the notice of any one who was not entirely bereaved of his senses; for some were in this condition to all intents and purposes; particularly one, in the ravings despair brought upon him, was seen stalking about the deck, flourishing a cutlass over his head, and calling himself king of the country, and striking every body he came near, till his companions, seeing no other security against his tyranny, knocked him down. Some, reduced before by long sickness and the scurvy, became on this occasion, as it were, petrified, and bereaved of all sense, like inanimate logs, and were banded to and fro by the jerks and rolls of the ship, without exerting any efforts to help themselves.' This happened in the middle of the night; and, when day broke, the people got the boats out; but Mr. Byron, who, with the captain, went on shore, could not save a single article of his clothes, except what he had on his back. The land was, if possible, more dreadful than the sea, nothing appearing all around but a wild solitude, alike destitute of animals and vegetation. This dismal spot lay to the northward of the Straits of Magellan; but whether it formed part of an island or of the continent the sufferers had no means of determining. The narrative proceeds thus: It is natural to think,' says the author, that to men, thus upon the point of perishing by shipwreck, getting to land was the highest attainment of their wishes; yet, all things considered, our condition was but little mended by the change. Whichever way we looked, a scene of horror presented itself: on one side the wreck (in which was all that we had in the world to support and subsist us), together with a boisterous sea, presented us with the most dreary prospect; on the other, the land did not wear a much more favorable appearance; desolate and barren, without sign of culture, we could hope to receive little other benefit from it than the preservation it afforded us from the sea. Exerting ourselves, however, though faint, benumbed, and almost helpless, to find some wretched covert against the extreme inclemency of the weather, we discovered an Indian hut, at a small distance from the beach, within a wood, in which as many as possible, without distinction, crowded themselves, the night coming on exceedingly tempestuous and rainy. But here our situation was such as to exclude all rest and refreshment by sleep from most of us; for, besides that we pressed upon one another extremely, we were not without our alarms and apprehensions of being attacked by the Indians, from a discovery we made of some of their lances and other arms in our hut; and our uncertainty of their strength and disposition gave alarm to our imagination, and kept us in continual anxiety. In this miserable hovel, one of our company, a lieutenant of invalids, died this night; and of those who for want of room took shelter under a great tree, which stood them in very little stead, two more perished by the severity of that cold and rainy night. In the morning the calls of hunger, which had been hitherto suppressed by our attention to more immediate dangers and difficulties, were now become too importunate to be resisted. We had most of us fasted eight-and-forty hours, some more; it was time, therefore, to make inquiry among ourselves what store of sustenance had been brought from the wreck by the providence of some, and what could be procured on the island by the industry of others; but the produce of the one amounted to no more than two or three pounds of biscuit-dust reserved in a bag; and E all the success of those who ventured abroad, the weather being still exceedingly bad, was to kill one sea-gull and pick some wild celery. We were in all about a hundred and forty who had got to shore; but some few remained still on board, detained either by drunkenness, or a view of pillaging the wreck. These were visited by an officer in the yawl, who was to endeavour to prevail upon them to join the rest; but, finding them in the greatest disorder, and disposed to mutiny, he was obliged to desist from his purpose, and return without them. The ensuing night proved exceedingly tempestuous; and, the sea running very high, threatened those on board with immediate destruction, by the parting of the wreck. They then were as solicitous to get ashore as they were before obstinate in refusing the assistance we sent them; and, when they found the boat did not come to their relief at the instant they expected it, without considering how impracticable a thing it was to send it them in such a sea, they fired one of the quarter-deck guns at the hut; the ball of which did but just pass over the covering of it, and was plainly heard by the captain and us who were within. Another attempt, therefore, was made to bring these madmen to land; which, however, proved ineffectual. This unavoidable delay made the people on board outrageous: yet one thing in this outrage they seemed particularly attentive to, which was, to provide themselves with arms and ammunition, in order to support them in putting their mutinous designs in execution, and asserting their claim to a lawless exemption from the authority of their officers, which they pretended must cease with the loss of the ship. But of these arms, which we stood in great need of, they were soon bereaved, upon coming ashore, by the resolution of Captain Cheap and Lieutenant Hamilton of the marines. Among these mutineers was the boatswain; who, instead of exerting the authority he had over the rest, to keep them within bounds as much as possible, was himself a ringleader in their riot. Him, without respect to the figure he then made (for he was in laced clothes), Captain Cheap, by a blow well laid on with his cane, felled to the ground. It was scarce possible to refrain from laughter at the whimsical appearance these fellows made, who, having rifled the chests of the officers' best suits, had put them on over their greasy trowsers and dirty checked shirts. They were soon stripped of their finery, as they had before been obliged to resign their arms. 'The incessant rains, and exceeding cold weather in this climate, made it necessary to fall upon some expedient, without delay, which We might serve the purpose of shelter. Accordingly, the gunner, carpenter, and some more, turning the cutter keel upwards, and fixing it upon props, made no despicable habitation. Having thus established some sort of settlement, we had the more leisure to look about us. soon provided ourselves with some sea-fowl, and found limpets, muscles, and other shell-fish, in tolerable abundance; but this rummaging of the shore was now becoming extremely irksome to those who had any feeling, by the bodies of our drowned people thrown among the rocks, some of which were hideous spectacles, from the mangled condition they were in by the violent surf that drove in upon the coast. These horrors were overcome by the distresses of our people, who were even glad of the occasion of killing the gallinazo (the carrion crow of that country) while preying on these carcasses, in order to make a meal of them. But a provision by no means proportionable to the number of mouths to be fed could, by our utmost industry, be acquired from that part of the island we had hitherto traversed: therefore, till we were in a capacity of making more distant excursions, the wreck was to be applied to, as often as possible, for such supplies as could be got out of her. The difficulties we had to encounter in our visits to the wreck cannot be easily described; for no part of it being above water except the quarter-deck and part of the forecastle, we were usually obliged to come at such things as were within reach, by means of large hooks fastened to poles, in which business we were much incommoded by the dead bodies floating between decks. 'In order to secure what we thus got, Captain Cheap ordered a store-tent to be erected near his hut, from which nothing was to be dealt out but in the measure and proportion agreed upon by the officers; and though it was very hard upon us petty officers, who were fatigued with hunting all day in quest of food, to defend this tent from invasion by night, no other means could be devised for this purpose so effectual as the committing this charge to our care. Yet, notwithstanding our utmost vigilance and care, frequent robberies were committed upon our trust, the tent being accessible in more than one place. The allowance which might consistently be dispensed from thence was so little proportionable to our common exigencies, together with our daily and nightly task of roving after food, not in the least relaxed, that many at this time perished with hunger. A boy, when no other eatables could be found, having picked up the liver of one of the drowned men (whose carcass had been torn to pieces by the force with which the sea drove it among the rocks), was with difficulty withheld from making a meal of it. It must be observed that on the 14th of May we were cast away, and it was not till the 25th of this month that provision was served regularly from the store-tent. Whenever the weather permitted, which was now grown something drier, but exceeding cold, we employed ourselves about the wreck, from which we had, at sundry times, recovered several articles of provision and liquor: these were deposited in the store-tent. Ill humour and discontent, from the difficulties we laboured under in procuring subsistence, and the little prospect there was of any amendment in our condition, was now breaking out apace. In some it showed itself by a separation of settlement and habitation; in others, by a resolution of leaving the captain entirely, and making a wild journey by themselves, without determining upon any plan whatever. For my own part, liking none of their parties, I built a little hut just big enough for myself and a poor Indian dog I found in the woods, who could shift for himself along shore at low water, by getting limpets. This creature grew so fond of me, and faithful, that he would suffer nobody to come near the hut without biting them. 'Our number, which was at first one hundred and forty-five, was now reduced to one hundred, and chiefly by famine, which put the rest upon all shifts and devices to support themselves. One day, when I was at home in my hut with my Indian dog, a party came to my door, and told me their necessities were such, that they must eat the creature or starve. Though their plea was urgent, I could not help using some arguments to endeavour to dissuade them from killing him, as his faithful services and fondness deserved it at my hands; but, without weighing my arguments, they took him away by force, and killed him; upon which, thinking that I had at least as good a right to a share as the rest, I sat down with them, and partook of their repast. Three weeks after that I was glad to make a meal of his paws and skin, which, upon recollecting the spot where they had killed him, I found thrown aside and rotten.' The use which Lord Byron has made of this incident, in the second canto of Don Juan,' has exposed him to the charge of plagiarism by some learned Theban,' whose name we forget. We subjoin the So Juan's spaniel, spite of his entreating, |
