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From there he obtained help and returned to the wreck, arriving at the Abrolhos in the middle of September; but during the absence of the commander the castaways had gone through a terrible experience, which is related in Therenot's Recueil de Voyages Curieux, and translated into English in Major's book, from which the following is extracted:
We sailed from Bahia. A few days afterwards, when not far distant from the Abrolhos Islets, my attention was called to a reddish-brown appearance in the sea. The whole surface of the water, as it appeared under a weak lens, seemed as if covered by chopped bits of hay, with their ends jagged. These are minute cylindrical confervae, in bundles or rafts of from twenty to sixty in each. Mr.
These shoals, like the Abrolhos, appear to stand on the outer edge of a bank projecting off this portion of the coast, as we did not get bottom after leaving their parallel. On the 20th, in the afternoon, we passed, having no soundings with 200 fathoms, along the western side of Scott's Reef, at the distance of three miles, and determined its position.
A terrible storm destroyed ten of the fleet, and on June 4, 1629, the Batavia was driven ashore on the reef still known as Houtman's Abrolhos, which had been discovered and named by a Dutch East Indiaman some years earlier probably by the commander of the Leeuwin, who discovered and named after his ship the cape at the southwest point of the continent.
The favourable account which Captain Grey had given of the country behind the range made the knowledge of a good anchorage in its neighbourhood of vast importance. Captain King missed this portion of the coast by crossing over to the Abrolhos, which he places some five miles too much to the westward, the lowness of the island deceiving him, as indeed it at first did us.
The VIANEN sighted the west coast in 1628, and kept in sight of it for some two hundred miles, reporting "a foul and barren shore, green fields; and very wild, black, barbarous inhabitants." The wreck of the BATAVIA on Houtman's Abrolhos, in 1629, is one of the most tragic incidents in early Australian history.
Passing outside of a patch of breakers, lying two miles to the northward of the eastern islet, we hauled up south-east, and by feeling our way with the boats got the ship into a snug harbour on the south-east side of the highest island of the Abrolhos, which was afterwards named East Wallaby Island; another large one, named West Wallaby Island, lying two miles to the West-South-West with three small flat islets just between.
Some supplies they have lately had from Buenos Ayres, and even from the Cape de Verds; but the most surprising fact is that the Brazilian Governor of San Mattheos, near the Abrolhos, and the chiefs of other small Brazilian ports in that quarter have been loading vessels for the enemy's use under the simulated destination of Rio de Janeiro.
That part of the Abrolhos where we anchored seems to consist of a number of small islets, perhaps 10 or 12, lying something in the form of an irregularly shaped horse's shoe, extending for a space of perhaps 20 miles in a north and south direction.
It may be proper to conclude our account of Houtman's Abrolhos with a few general remarks. They form three groups instead of one, as was formerly supposed; Pelsart Group being separated from Easter Group by a channel, the least width of which is four miles, whilst the middle passage between the latter and the Northern Group is six miles wide.
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