Note 170 — CHAP. II.

Such accidents as this here related, probably happen frequently in the Pacific Ocean. In 1696, two canoes, having on board thirty persons of both sexes, were driven by contrary winds and tempestuous weather, on the isle of Samal, one of the Philippines, after being tost about at sea seventy days, and having performed a voyage from an island called by them Amorsot, 300 leagues to the east of Samal. Five of the number who had embarked, died of the hardships suffered during this extraordinary passage. See a particular account of them, and of the islands they belonged to, in Lettres Edifiantes and Curieuses, tom. xv. from p. 196 to p. 215. In the same volume, from p. 282 to p. 320, we have the relation of a similar adventure, in 1721, when two canoes, one containing twenty-four, and the other six persons, men, women, and children, were driven from an island they called Farroilep, northward to the isle of Guam, or Guahan, one of the Ladrones or Mariannes. But these had not sailed so far as their countrymen, who reached Samal as above, and they had been at sea only twenty days. There seems to be no reason to doubt the general authenticity of these two relations. The information contained in the letters of the Jesuits, about these islands, now known under the name of the Carolines, and discovered to the Spaniards by the arrival of the canoes at Samal and Guam, has been adopted by all our later writers. See President de Brosse’s Voyages aux Terres Australes, tom. ii. from p. 443. to p. 490. See also the Modern Universal History.