Anson's Voyage Round the World

rhood of Cape Horn until March when the autumn of the Southern Hemisphere had begun and with it the stormy season.)

To supply the place of the 240 invalids which had deserted there were ordered on board 210 marines detached from different regiments. These were raw and undisciplined men, for they were just raised, and had scarcely anything more of the soldier than their regimentals, none of them having been so far trained as to be permitted to fire. The last detachment of these marines came on board the 8th of August, and on the 10th the squadron sailed from Spithead to St. Helens, there to wait for a wind to proceed on the expedition.

But the diminishing the strength of the squadron was not the greatest inconvenience which attended these alterations, for the contests, representations, and difficulties which they continually produced occasioned a delay and waste of time which in its consequences was the source of all the disasters to which this enterprise was afterwards exposed. For by this means we were