A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 08Kerr, Robert
History
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 08
Kerr, Robert
Voyages and travels
While we rode from the end of November till the middle of February in
this harbour, which has sufficient water for a ship of 500 tons, we one
day attempted to take a Portuguese pangaia; but as our boat was so small
that our men had not room to move, and as they were armed with ten good
guns, like fowling-pieces, we were not able to take them. For the
excellence of its harbour and watering-place; its plenty of fish, of
which we took great store with our nets; for sundry sorts of fruits, as
cocoa-nuts and others, which were brought to us in abundance by the
Moors; and for oxen and poultry, this place is well worth being
carefully sought after by such of our ships as shall hereafter pass this
way; but our people had good need to beware of the Portuguese. While we
lay here their admiral of the coast, from Melinda to Mozambique, came
to view us, and would have taken our boat, if he had found an
opportunity. He was in a galley frigate, or armed pinnace, with eight or
nine oars of a side. We were advertised of the strength of this galley,
and their treacherous intentions, by an Arabian Moor, who came
frequently to us from the King of Zanzibar, about the delivery of the
priest, and afterwards by another Moor, whom we carried from thence
along with us: for, wheresoever we came, we took care to get one or two
of the natives into our hands, to learn the languages and conditions of
the parts at which we touched.
We had at this place another thunder clap, which shivered our foremast
very much, which we fished and repaired with timber from the shore, of
which there is abundance, the trees being about forty feet high, the
wood red and tough, and, as I suppose, a kind of cedar. At this place
our surgeon, Mr Arnold, negligently caught a great heat, or stroke of
the sun, in his head, while on land with the master in search of oxen,
owing to which he fell sick, and shortly died, though he might have been
cured by letting blood before the disease had settled. Before leaving
this place we procured some thousand weight of pitch, or rather a grey
and white gum, like frankincense, as clammy as turpentine, which grows
black when melted, and very brittle; but we mixed it with oil, of which
we had 300 jars from the prize taken to the north of the equator, not
far from Guinea. Six days before leaving Zanzibar, the head merchant of
the factory sent a letter to our captain, in friendship, as he
pretended, requesting a jar of wine, a jar of oil, and two or three
pounds of gunpowder. This letter he sent by a negro servant and a Moor,
in a canoe. Our captain sent him all he asked by the Moor, but took the
negro along with us, as we understood he had been formerly in the
Indies, and knew something of the country. By this negro we were
advertised of a small bark of some thirty tons, called _junco_ by the
Moors, which was come hither from Goa, laden with pepper for the
factory, and for sale in that kingdom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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