Page images
PDF
EPUB

filled at the lower part of the brook, yet higher up it will be found excellent.

The first and second, and perhaps the third ship that comes in the season, may be tolerably supplied with turtle; but those that come afterwards must be content with small ones. Those that we bought were of the green kind, and at an average cost us about a half-penny or three farthings a pound. We were much disappointed to find them neither fat nor well flavoured; and we imputed it to their having been long kept in crawls or pens of brackish water, without food. The fowls are large, and we bought a dozen of them for a Spanish dollar, which is about five-pence a-piece: The small deer cost us two-pence a-piece, and the larger, of which two only were brought down, a rupee. Many kinds of fish are to be had here, which the natives sell by hand, and we found them tolerably cheap. Cocoanuts we bought at the rate of a hundred for a dollar, if they were picked; and if they were taken promiscuously, one hundred and thirty. Plantains we found in great plenty: We procured also some pine-apples, water melons, jaccas, and pumpkins; besides rice, the greater part of which was of the mountain kind, that grows on dry land; yams, and several other vegetables, at a very reasonable rate.

The inhabitants are Javanese, whose Raja is subject to the Sultan of Bantam. Their customs are very similar to those of the Indians about Batavia; but they seem to be more jealous of their women, for we never saw any of them during all the time we were there, except one by chance in the woods, as she was running away to hide herself. They profess the Mahometan religion, but I believe there is not a mosque in the whole island: We were among them during the fast, which the Turks call Ramadan, which they seemed to keep with great rigour, for not one of them would touch a morsel of victuals, or even chew their betel, till sun-set.

Their food is nearly the same as that of the Batavian Indians, except the addition of the nuts of the palm, called Cycas circinalis, with which, upon the coast of New Holland, some of our people were made sick, and some of our hogs poisoned.

Upon observing these nuts to be part of their food, we enquired by what means they deprived them of their deleterious quality; and they told us, that they first cut them

into thin slices, and dried them in the sun; then steeped them in fresh water for three months, and afterwards, pressing out the water, dried them in the sun a second time; but we learnt that, after all, they are eaten only in times of scarcity, when they mix them with their rice to make it go farther.

The houses of their town are built upon piles, or pillars, four or five feet above the ground: Upon these is laid a floor of bamboo canes, which are placed at some distance from each other, so as to leave a free passage for the air from below; the walls also are of bamboo, which are interwoven, hurdlewise, with small sticks, that are fastened perpendicularly to the beams which form the frame of the building: It has a sloping roof, which is so well thatched with palm leaves, that neither the sun nor the rain can find entrance. The ground over which this building is erected, is an oblong square. In the middle of one side is the door, and in the middle between that and the end of the house, towards the left hand, is a window: A partition runs out from each end towards the middle, which, if continued, would divide the whole floor into two equal parts, longitudinally; but they do not meet in the middle, so that an opening is left over-against the door: Each end of the house therefore, to the right and left of the door, is divided into two rooms, like stalls in a stable, all open towards the passage from the door to the wall on the opposite side: In that next the door to the left hand, the children sleep; that opposite to it, on the right hand, is allotted to strangers; the master and his wife sleep in the inner room on the left hand, and that opposite to it is the kitchen. There is no difference between the houses of the poor and the rich, but in the size; except that the royal palace, and the house of a man, whose name was Gundang, the next in riches and influence to the king, were walled with boards, instead of being wattled with sticks and bamboo.

As the people are obliged to abandon the town, and live in the rice-fields at certain seasons, to secure their crops from the birds and the monkies, they have occasional houses there for their accommodation. They are exactly the same as the houses in the town, except that they are smaller, and are elevated eight or ten feet above the ground instead of four.

he

:

The disposition of the people, as far as we could discover it, is good. They dealt with us very honestly, except, like all other Indians, and the itinerant retailers of fish in London, they asked sometimes twice, and sometimes thrice as much for their commodities as they would take. As what they brought to market belonged, in different proportions, to a considerable number of the natives, and it would have been difficult to purchase it in separate lots, they found out a very easy expedient, with which every one was satisfied: They put all that was bought of one kind, as plantains, or cocoa-nuts, together, and when we had agreed for the heap, they divided the money that was paid for it among those of whose separate property it consisted, in a proportion corresponding with their contributions. Sometimes, indeed, they changed our money, giving us 240 doits, amounting to five shillings, for a Spanish dollar, and ninety-six, amounting to two shillings, for a Bengal rupee.

They all speak the Malay language, though they have a language of their own, different both from the Malay and the Javanese. Their own language they call Catta Gunung, the language of the mountains; and they say that it is spoken upon the mountains of Java, whence their tribe originally migrated, first to Mew Bay, and then to their present station, being driven from their first settlement by tygers, which they found too numerous to subdue.

We now made the best of our way for the Cape of Good Hope, but the seeds of disease which we had received at Batavia began to appear with the most threatening symptoms in dysenteries and slow fevers. Lest the water which we had taken in at Prince's Island should have any share in our sickness, we purified it with lime, and we washed all parts of the ship between decks with vinegar, as a remedy against infection. Mr Banks was among the sick, and for some time there was no hope of his life. ife. We were very soon in a most deplorable situation; the ship was nothing better than an hospital, in which those that were able to go about were too few to attend the sick, who were confined to their hammocks; and we had almost every night a dead body to commit to the sea. In the course of about six weeks, we buried Mr Sporing, a gentleman who was in Mr Banks's retinue, Mr Parkinson, his natural history painter, Mr Green, the astronomer, the boatswain, the carpenter and his mate, Mr Monkhouse, the midshipman, who had fothered the ship after she had been stranded on the coast of New Holland, our old jolly sail-maker and his assistant, the ship's cook, the corporal of the marines, two of the carpenter's crew, a midshipman, and nine seamen; in all three-andtwenty persons, besides the seven that we buried at Batavia. On Friday the 15th of March, about ten o'clock in the morning, we anchored off the Cape of Good Hope, in seven fathom, with an oozy bottom. The west point of the bay, called the Lion's Tail, bore W.N.W., and the castle S.W., distant about a mile and a half. I immediately waited upon the governor, who told me that I should have every thing the country afforded. My first care was to provide a proper place ashore for the sick, which were not a few; and a house was soon found, where it was agreed they should be lodged and boarded at the rate of two shillings a-head per day.

thered

Our run from Java Head to this place afforded very few subjects of remark that can be of use to future navigators; such as occurred, however, I shall set down. We had left Java Head eleven days before we got the general south-east trade-wind, during which time we did not advance above 5o to the southward, and 3o to the west, having variable light airs, interrupted by calms, with sultry weather, and an unwholesome air, occasioned probably by the load of vapours which the eastern trade-wind and westerly monsoons bring into these latitudes, both which blow in these seas at the time of the year when we happened to be there. The easterly wind prevails as far as 10° or 12° S., and the westerly as far as 6° or 8°; in the intermediate space the winds are variable, and the air, I believe, always unwholesome; it certainly aggravated the diseases which we brought with us from Batavia, and particularly the flux, which was not in the least degree checked by any medicine, so that whoever was seized with it considered himself as a dead man; but we had no sooner got into the trade-wind, than we began to feel its salutary effects:

2 In the Biog. Brit. where a summary of Cook's Voyages is given, an observation is made on this melancholy part of the narrative, which the reader may not be displeased to see copied here. "It is probable that these calamitous events, which could not fail of making a powerful impression on the mind of Lieutenant Cook, might give occasion to his turning his thoughts more zealously to those methods of preserving the health of seamen, which he afterwards pursued with such remarkable success. These methods will be amply detailed hereafter.-E.

fects: We buried indeed several of our people afterwards, but they were such as had been taken on board in a state so low and feeble that there was scarcely a possibility of their recovery. At first we suspected that this dreadful disorder might have been brought upon us by the water that we took on board at Prince's Island, or even by the turtle that we bought there; but there is not the least reason to believe that this suspicion was well-grounded, for all the ships that came from Batavia at the same season, suffered in the same degree, and some of them even more severely, though none of them touched at Prince's Island in their way.

A few days after we left Java, we saw boobies about the ship for several nights successively, and as these birds are known to roost every night on shore, we thought them an indication that some island was not far distant; perhaps it might be the island of Selam, which, in different charts, is very differently laid down both in name and situation.

The variation of the compass off the west coast of Java, is about 3o W., and so it continued without any sensible variation, in the common track of ships, to the longitude of 288° W., latitude 22° S., after which it increased apace, so that in longitude 295°, latitude 23o, the variation was 10° 20 W.: In seven degrees more of longitude, and one of latitude, it increased two degrees; in the same space farther to the west, it increased five degrees: In latitude 28°, longitude 314°, it was 24o, 20', in latitude 29°, longitude 317°, it was 26° 10', and was then stationary for the space of about ten degrees farther to the west; but in latitude 34°, longitude 333, we observed it twice to be 28° W., and this was its greatest variation, for in latitude 35°, longitude 337°, it was 24°, and continued gradually to decrease; so that off. Cape Anguillas it was 22° 30', and in Table Bay 20° 30′ W.

As to currents, it did not appear that they were at all considerable, till we came within a little distance of the meridian of Madagascar; for after we had made 52° of longitude from Java Head, we found, by observation, that our error in longitude was only two degrees, and it was the same when we had made only nineteen. This error might be owing partly to a current setting to the westward, partly to our not making proper allowances for the setting of the sea before which we run, and perhaps to an error in the assumed longitude of Java Head. If that longitude is erro

neous,

« EelmineJätka »