Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 2.djvu/297

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THE NAVAL OFFICER.
291

yards above the high-water-mark. Her masts and spars were lying in all directions on the beach, which was strewed with her cargo. This consisted of a variety of toys and hardware, musical instruments, violins, flutes, fifes, and bird-organs. Some few remains of books, which I picked up, were French romances, with indelicate plates, and still worse text. These proved the vessel to be French. At a short distance from the wreck, on a rising knoll, we found three or four huts, rudely constructed out of the fragments; and, a little farther off, a succession of graves, each surmounted with a cross. I examined the huts, which contained some rude and simple relics of human tenantcy: a few benches and tables, composed of boards roughly hewn out and nailed together; bones of goats, and of the wild hog, with the remains of burnt wood. But we could not discover any traces of the name of the vessel or owner; nor were there any names marked or cut on the boards, as might have been expected, to shew