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In a creek in this river, called Lavington Creek, we saw at low water such shoals, or hills rather, of mussels, that great boats might have loaded with them, and no miss have been made of them. Near this creek, Sir Samuel Barnadiston had a very fine seat, as, also, a decoy for wild ducks, and a very noble estate; but it is divided into many branches since the death of the ancient possessor.
The third coaster, a small felucca, too, was to the northward; but ever since the land-breeze, if breeze it could be called, had come she had been busy turning slowly up to windward, and seemed disposed either to cross the shoals closer in than the spot where the lugger lay or to enter the Golo.
The sea here was more like a broad stream which is bounded by noble rocks, and interspersed by small and large rocks and shoals, over which the waters dashed finely. Near the harbour, some buildings lie partly on and partly between the rocks; these contain the celebrated royal Swedish iron-foundry, called the new foundry. Even numerous American ships were lying here to load this metal.
On the 20th, in the afternoon, he thought he saw land, and stood in for it; but night coming on, and it being now very dark, he lay to, fearing he might get on some rocks and shoals. July 21, the weather was very fine all the morning, but in the afternoon it became thick and hazy. Mr.
Bruce says no such shoals exist; but, as is justly observed by Dr. Vincent; the correctness of the ancients respecting them, especially Eratosthenes, Agatharcides and Artemidorus, is fully borne out by the danger and loss to which many English ships have been exposed by reason of these very shoals.
As I have been always much amused and interested by this subject, and had frequent opportunities, during many years' experience, to observe and examine these shoals in their various stages of subaqueous progress, and subsequent emersion I am convinced that not only many considerable islands, but extensive insular groups, owe their existence to the above origin."
The duke and Oquendo, with some of the best sailors among the Fleet, tried to beat out from the crowd and get room to manoeuvre, but Drake's ships were too weatherly and too well handled to permit of this, and they were driven back again into the confused mass, which was being slowly forced towards the shoals and banks of the coasts.
It was something to extinguish the Spanish Inquisition a still more cruel and devouring enemy than the sea. It was something that the fugitive spirit of civil and religious liberty had found at last its most substantial and steadfast home upon those storm-washed shoals and shifting sandbanks. It was something to come to the rescue of England in her great agony, and help to save her from invasion.
We had our work cut out to hold this one while the wind was light and astern, but in the morning, when it hauled and came fresher, we went flying over the shoals. So far as the looks of it went the big coaster might as well have been anchored then. All that day we held on. And it was a lesson in sailing to see the way some of those seiners were handled.
They got one of their canoes a few miles down it, with extreme difficulty, sometimes wading and dragging it over the shoals; at length they had to abandon the attempt, and to resume their journey on foot, aided by their faithful old pack-horse, who had recruited strength during the repose of the winter.
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