to Mr. Jar dine of Somerset, in a cove of the reef came on an old anchor, removed it, and there lay a great heap of gold and silver Spanish dollars, in good preservation, but welded together in a mass, and worth several thousands of pounds. It took more than one boatload to remove it. Also fragments of coloured glass lay with it. What ancient Spanish galleon found her end here? Would that yet we could learn.
The curious coral presented to me I regret to say I left behind, as I did not know what to do with it. Huge branches and almost bushes of coral are cumbersome things, and in reality a nuisance unless one has a real aquarium in which to place them. I remember on another voyage being presented with sacks full of wonderful coral at Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago—remote coral atolls lying away by themselves in the middle of the Pacific and very seldom visited, but very interesting—and how I got to hate that coral ere I could find people to accept it. It was a gift of gratitude from the only two Europeans then living in those solitary isles, and I appreciated the spirit of the gift, but had to pass it on.
On the 14th September we dropped anchor at Cooktown and I went ashore with some of the officers of the ship, making myself very spruce in case of there being any kangaroo “dressed for dinner.” As we approached the pier there was a most offensive odour, which we wondered at, and on landing I walked towards something lying on the sand in the blazing sun, and was horrified to find it was the much decomposed body of a man, partly eaten by fish. Some men just then arrived with a coffin in a cart and the remains were shovelled in, but the coffin lay there all day. The man had been drowned some time previously.
