We continued here till Friday the 15th, and during all that time had one
continued storm, with impenetrable fogs, and incessant rain. On the
12th, I sent out the boat, with an officer to look for harbours on the
southern shore: The boat was absent till the 14th, and then returned,
with an account that there were five bays between the ship's station and
Cape Upright, where we might anchor in great safety. The officer told
me, that near Cape Upright he had fallen in with a few Indians, who had
given him a dog, and that; one of the women had offered him a child
which was sucking at her breast. It is scarcely necessary to say that he
refused it, but the offer seems to degrade these poor forlorn savages
more than any thing in their appearance or manner of life: It must be a
strange depravity of nature that leaves them destitute of affection for
their offspring, or a most deplorable situation that impresses
necessities upon them by which it is surmounted. Some hills, which,
when, we first came to this place, had no snow upon them, were now
covered, and the winter of this dreary and inhospitable region seemed to
have set in at once: The poor seamen not only suffered much by the cold,
but had scarcely ever a dry thread about them: I therefore distributed
among the crews of both the ships, not excepting the officers, two bales
of a thick woollen stuff, called Fearnought, which is provided by the
government, so that every body on board had now a warm jacket, which at
this time was found both comfortable and salutary.

At eight o'clock in the morning of the 15th, we weighed and made sail,
and at three o'clock in the afternoon, we were once more abreast of Cape
Monday, and at five we anchored in a bay on the east side of it. The
pitch of the cape bore N.W. distant half a mile, and the extreme points
of the bay from E. to N. by W. We lay at about half a cable's length
from the nearest shore, which was a low island between the ship and the
cape.