Early Voyages to Terra Australis, Now Called Australia:: A Collection of Documents, and Extracts from Early Manuscript Maps, Illustrative of the History of Discovery on the Coasts of That Vast Island, from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century to the Time of Captain Cook.Major, Richard Henry
History
Early Voyages to Terra Australis, Now Called Australia:: A Collection of Documents, and Extracts from Early Manuscript Maps, Illustrative of the History of Discovery on the Coasts of That Vast Island, from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century to the Time of Captain Cook.
Major, Richard Henry
Australia -- Discovery and exploration; Discoveries in geography -- Portuguese; Voyages and travels
dogs, but not their deceased relations, whom they lay down upon high
rocks to decay under the rain and sun, till nothing remains but the
white bones, which at length they bury when they think proper. Their
food consists chiefly of fishes, with which their seas abound, and of
yams and plantains. They have no sagoe trees, neither do they know how
to prepare the bread from it if they had any. Their arms are hasagays,
clumsy and long arrows, and also a weapon formed from a sort of blue
stone or slate, pointed at both ends, having a hole in the middle, in
which a stick is put for a handle. With this they attack one another in
such a manner, that with one stroke the skull is crushed to pieces: the
farther you go to the south the more savage, tall, and ugly the people
are, in particular from Lacca-iha to Oero-goba.
“‘A certain shallop from Banda, being on the coast, which stretches
nearly east from Arou, they found there such large people, that one of
our sailors was taken by his sleeve by one of them and shaken like a
little boy; but he was rescued by his shipmates. To the south of this
place a great promontory stretches itself to the west, called in the map
Cape Falso, and again, to the south of this, is laid down the shallow
bight, where it is supposed that Nova Guinea is divided from the South
Land by a strait terminating in the South Sea, though, by reason of the
shallowness, our people could not pass it; and thus it remains uncertain
whether this strait goes through or not, but in the old Portuguese maps
New Guinea is laid down as an island under the name of Ceira.[26]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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