Fastening half-a-dozen tubs together by means of ropes and planks, M. Zermatt and his sons succeeded in making a sort of raft, on which all the family took their seats before the day drew to an end. The sea was calm, scarcely heaving with a slow swell, and the flowing tide ran towards the coast. After leaving a long promontory on the starboard side, the floating raft came ashore in a little bay where a river emptied itself.
As soon as the various articles brought from the ship had been set ashore a tent was pitched in this spot which afterwards received the name of Tent Home. The encampment was gradually completed with the ship's cargo which M. Zermatt and his sons went on the following days to take from the hold of the Landlord, utensils, furniture, bedding, tinned meats, grain of various kinds, plants, sporting guns, casks of wine and liqueurs, tins of biscuits, cheeses and hams, clothes, linen, everything, in short, which was carried in this four hundred ton vessel freighted to supply the requirements of a new colony.
They found that game, both furred and feathered, swarmed upon this coast. Whole flocks and herds were seen, of agoutis, a kind of hare with head like that of a pig, ondatras, a species of musk rat, buffaloes, ducks, flamingoes, bustards, grouse, peccaries, and antelopes. In the waters of the bay which spread beyond the creek was abundance of salmon, sturgeon, herrings, and a score of other species of fish, as well as mussels, oysters, lobsters, crayfish, and crabs. In the surrounding country, where cassava and sweet potatoes flourished, cotton trees and cocoa trees were growing together with mangroves, palms and other tropical species.
Thus existence seemed to be assured to these shipwrecked folk, upon this land of whose bearings they knew nothing at all.
It had been found possible to land a number of domestic animals—Turk, an English dog; Floss, a Danish bitch; two goats, six sheep, a sow in farrow, an ass, a cow, and a perfect poultry yard of cocks, hens, turkeys, geese, ducks, and pigeons, which soon acclimatised themselves to the surface of the ponds and marshes and the grass lands adjoining the coast.
The final trips to the ship had emptied it of everything valuable or useful that it contained. Several four-pounder cannons were conveyed to the shore for the defence of the encampment, and also a pinnace, a light vessel which, as all its pieces were numbered, could easily be put together, and to which the name Elizabeth was given in compliment to Betsy. M. Zermatt was then master of a ship, brigantine-rigged, fifteen tons burthen, with square stern and after deck. Thus he had every facility for exploring the seas either to the east or the west, and for rounding the neighbouring promontories, one of which broke away towards the north in a sharp point while the other stretched out opposite Tent Home.
The mouth of the river was framed within lofty rocks which rendered it difficult of access, and self-defence there would be easy, at any rate against wild beasts.
One question which arose was as to whether the Zermatts had reached the shore of an island or of a continent washed by the waters of the Indian Ocean. The only information they had on this point was derived from the bearings taken by the commander of the Landlord before the shipwreck.
The ship was approaching Batavia when she was struck by a storm which lasted for six days and threw her far out of her course, to the south-east. The day before the captain had fixed his position as being latitude 13° 40′ south, and longitude 114° 5′ east of the island of Ferro in the Canary Group. As the wind had blown constantly from the north, it was a fair assumption that the longitude had not varied appreciably. By keeping the meridian at about the hundred and fourteenth degree, M. Zermatt concluded from an observation of latitude, taken with a sextant, that the Landlord must have drifted approximately six degrees southward, and consequently, that the coast of Tent Home could be located between the nineteenth and the twentieth parallels.
It followed that this land must be, in round figures, between six and seven hundred miles west of Australia. And so, although he did possess the pinnace, M. Zermatt would never have dared, however ardent his desire to return to his native country, to trust his family to so fragile a vessel and expose them to the dangers of the violent cyclones and tornadoes common in these seas.