They went back the way they had come as soon as they had completed their business, or, at last abandoning hope of rescue, died among the sands. Mariners have good cause to fear this coast. Its white sands are strewn with the skeletons of ships and men. Many indeed are the ships that have stranded here, and few indeed are those that have escaped to make another port. And of the crews and passengers that found themselves castaways on this coast of death, only a handful survived the tortures of hunger, thirst, and exposure till rescue came.
Countless skeletons lie beneath the sand dunes or bleach white in the blazing sun.
Nobody will ever know their indentity. Some of the ships, too, whose timber and iron frames stand out blackly against the white surf and sand, could provide the key to ocean mysteries that have puzzled the world for generations. Their wrecks were never recorded. There is no more treacherous coast in the world than this. Not only has it never been completely charted, but such charts as have been drawn by observation from the sea are unreliable.