bserved some gum burning before
a wooden image.

This island was supposed to be about eight miles in length, five in
breadth, and fifteen in circumference; a coral reef seemed to guard it
from all approach, except on the north-west part which formed a bay,
where the ship anchored in thirteen fathoms water. Fresh water was seen
only in one place.

Mr. Bampton did not arrive at Timor until the 11th of September, having
been detained in the straits by a most difficult and dangerous
navigation. By this passage he had an opportunity of discovering that the
straits which were named after Torres, and supposed to have been passed
first by him in the year 1606, and afterwards by Green in 1722, could
never have existed; for Mr. Bampton now observed, that New Guinea
extended ninety miles to the southward of this supposed track.

Of the two convicts taken from hence by the _Shah Hormuzear_, John Ascot
was killed by the natives with Captain Hill, and Catharine Pryor, Ascot's
wife, died two days before the ship got to Batavia, of a spotted fever, the
effect of frequent inebriety while at Timor. Ascot was the young man
whose activity prevented the _Sirius_, with the stores and provisions on
board, from being burnt the night after she was wrecked off Norfolk
Island, and thereby saved that settlement from feeling absolute want at
that time.

Captain Dell was full three months in his passage from Bombay; during the
latter part of which time the people on board suffered great distress from
a shortness of water and fuel. Out of seventy-five persons, mostly
Lascars, with whom he sailed, nine died, and a fever existed among those
who remained on his arrival.

The people who had broken into Mr. Kent's house were so daring as to send
to that gentleman a letter in miserable verse, containing some invectives
against one Bevan, a prisoner in confinement for a burglary, and a woman
who they supposed had given information of the people that broke into the
clergyman's storeroom, which affair they took upon themselves. The letter
was accompanied by a pocket-book belonging to Mr. Kent, and some of his
papers; but none of the bills which were in it when it was stolen were
returned.

The insolence of this proceeding, and the frequency of those nocturnal
visits, surprised and put all persons on their guard; but that the enemy
was within our own doors there was no doubt. An honest servant was in this
country an invaluable treasure; we were compelle