that there is no wood on Falkland's Islands, Pepys's Island and
Falkland's Islands may notwithstanding be the same; for upon Falkland's
Islands there are immense quantities of flags with narrow leaves, reeds
and rushes which grow in clusters, so as to form bushes about three feet
high, and then shoot about six or seven feet higher: These at a distance
have greatly the appearance of wood, and were taken for wood by the
French, who landed there in the year 1764, as appears by Pernetty's
account of their voyage.[27] It has been suggested that the latitude of
Pepys's Island might, in the MS. from which the account of Cowley's
voyage was printed, be expressed in figures, which, if ill made, might
equally resemble forty-seven, and fifty-one; and therefore as there is
no island in these seas in latitude forty-seven, and as Falkland's
Islands lie nearly in fifty-one, that fifty-one might reasonably be
concluded to be the number for which the figures were intended to stand:
Recourse therefore was had to the British Museum, and a manuscript
journal of Cowley's was there found. In this manuscript no mention is
made of an island not before known, to which he gave the name of Pepys's
Island, but land is mentioned in latitude forty-seven degrees forty
minutes, expressed in words at length, which exactly answers to the
description of what is called Pepys's Island in the printed account, and
which here, he says, he supposed to be the islands of Sebald de Wert.
This part of the manuscript is in the following words: "January, 1683,
This month we were in the latitude of forty-seven degrees and forty
minutes, where we espied an island bearing west from us; we having the
wind at east north-east, we bore away for it; it being too late for us
to go on shore, we lay by all night. The island seemed very pleasant to
the eye, with many woods, I may as well say the whole land was woods.
There being a rock lying above water to the eastward of it, where an
innumerable company of fowls, being of the bigness of a small goose,
which fowls would strike at our men as they were aloft: Some of them we