Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
trial and error. Some substances proved poisonous; others made the
men sick; some were just inedible; but there were items that Byron
and his surgeons found to be, or believed to be, excellent remedies
for various ailments, notably, of course, scurvy. Reading the nautic-
al journals of this period, it is interesting to see just how absorbed
captains were in exploring the healing possibilities of strange plant
and animal foodstuffs. Each made his own discoveries and swore by
them. For Byron, coconuts appeared to be a sovereign remedy:
It is astonishing the effect these nuts alone had on those afflicted
with that dreadful disease [scurvy]. Many that could not stir without
the help of two men, and who were in the most violent pain imagin-
able, their limbs as black as ink, and thought to be in the last stage of
that disorder were in a few days by eating those nuts (tho' at sea) so
far relieved as to do their duty, and even go aloft as well as they had
done before.
6
Byron, therefore, kept to a minimum the length of time that his
ships spent at sea or tacking off barren coasts, and this helped to de-
termine his route.
His reasons for seeking the long-lost Solomons were both exotic
and pragmatic. The El Dorado whose rumoured existence had ex-
cited captains and geographers since the voyages of Mendafia and
Quiros supposedly lay close to the Pacific route which a ship would
take if borne along by the trade winds. Byron could, therefore, make
a crossing which would avoid those hideous experiences which had
befallen the
Centurion
and still solve one of the great puzzles of
South Sea exploration. Given the choice between searching for either
of two places which might not exist, the Solomon Islands must have
seemed preferable as an objective to the Straits of Anian.
When Byron set out at the beginning of July he made course
for the west coast of Africa. Having rewatered at the Cape Verde Is-
