A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 10: 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
History
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 10: 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
The boat was now sent to the other island to see for a more convenient
place in which to anchor; but she was presently beset by a vast number
of canoes filled with a mad sort of people, armed with clubs, who
boarded the boat and attacked the Dutchmen. On firing their muskets, the
savages laughed at them for making so much noise and doing so little
hurt; but, on the next discharge, one of them being shot through the
breast, they learnt to pay more respect to the muskets, and to keep
their due distance for the future. The savages were lusty,
well-proportioned men, and most expert swimmers, but naked and thievish,
and very fantastical in the fashion of their hair, some having it
short, others long, some curled, and others plaited or folded up in
various forms.
On the 12th the savages came again in their canoes, laden with cocoas,
bananas, _ubes-roots_, hogs, and fresh water, contending violently who
should get first on board. Those who were behind, being unable to get
over the throng of canoes and men before them, leapt into the sea, and
diving under the canoes, swam to the ship with bunches of cocoas in
their mouths, and climbed up the side like so many rats, and in such
swarms that the Dutch had to keep them off with cudgels. The Dutch
bartered with them that day for so many cocoas, as to produce twelve for
each of their men, being eighty-five in number. The natives wondered
much at the size and strength of the Dutch ship; and some of them even
dived under her bottom, knocking it with stones, as if to try how strong
it was. The king of these savages sent a black hog on board as a
present, charging the messenger to take no reward. Shortly after he came
in person, in a large ship of their fashion, attended by thirty-five
single canoes; and when at a small distance from the ship, he and all
his people began to bawl out as loud as they could, being their manner
of welcoming strangers. The Dutch received him with drums and trumpets,
which pleased him much; and he and his attendants shewed their sense of
this honourable reception by bowing and clapping their hands. The king
gave them a present after his fashion, which they requited with an old
hatchet, some rusty nails and glass beads, and a piece of linen, with
all which he seemed much pleased. This king was not distinguished from
his subjects by any external mark of dignity, but merely by the
reverence they shewed him, as he was equally naked with all the rest;
but he could not be prevailed on to come on board the Unity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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