A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 09: Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present TimeKerr, Robert
History
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 09: Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time
Kerr, Robert
Voyages and travels
We then sailed along the coast, and on the 11th of the month we sent our
boat ashore with Sir Thomas Powell, accompanied as before, to make
farther enquiries, and to endeavour to hire a pilot to direct our course
for Guadal, as we were unacquainted with the coast. They came to a place
called _Pesseque_, about a day's journey from Tesseque, where they had
similar accounts with the former, all commending the port of Guadal as
the best place at which the ambassador could land. Wherefore, being
unable to procure a pilot, we resolved, with God's blessing, to sail to
that place with all the speed we could. On the 13th, while on our way,
we espied coming towards us from the eastwards, two great boats, called
_teradas_, which were sailing along shore for Ormus. Whereupon, that we
might procure a pilot from them, we manned our skiff sufficiently to
bring them by force to our ship, if entreaties were unavailing, yet
without meaning to offer them the smallest injury, or even to send them
away dissatisfied.
When our skiff came up with them, instead of answering the hails of our
men, they waved our skiff to leeward with a drawn sword; on which,
thinking to fear them, and make them lower their sail, our men fired a
random shot towards them, which they answered by firing another directly
at our skiff, followed by half a hundred arrows, to which our men
answered by plying all their muskets. But our skiff was unable to hold
way with them, as they were under sail, and had therefore to return to
the ship, with one man very dangerously wounded by an arrow in the
breast, who afterwards recovered. As we in the ship saw the skiff
returning without them, we hoisted out our long-boat, and sent her after
the two _teradas_, we following with the ship as near the shore as we
could with safety; for it was now of much importance that we should
speak with them, on purpose to avoid their spreading scandalous reports
of us in the country, which might have frustrated our chief hopes of
landing the ambassador at _Guadal_, being the place we most depended
upon, and being destitute of any other place for the purpose, should
this fail, considering the unwelcome intelligence we had got concerning
Guzerat at the Cape.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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