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
After we had been here a little while the men began to be familiar, and
we cloathed some of them, designing to have some service of them for it;
for we found some wells of water here, and intended to carry two or
three barrels of it aboard. But being somewhat troublesome to carry to
the canoes, we thought to have made these men to have carried it for us,
and therefore we gave them some cloathes; to one an old pair of
breeches, to another a ragged shirt, to a third a jacket that was scarce
worth owning, which yet would have been very acceptable at some places
where we had been, and so we thought they might have been with these
people. We put them on them, thinking that this finery would have
brought them to work heartily for us; and our water being filled in
small long barrels, about six gallons in each, which were made purposely
to carry water in, we brought these our new servants to the wells, and
put a barrel on each of their shoulders for them to carry to the canoa.
But all the signs we could make were to no purpose, for they stood like
statues, without motion, but grinned like so many monkeys, staring one
upon another; for these poor creatures seem not accustomed to carry
burthens, and I believe that one of our ship-boys of ten years old would
carry as much as one of them. So we were forced to carry our water
ourselves, and they very fairly put the cloathes off again and laid them
down, as if cloathes were only to work in. I did not perceive that they
had any great liking to them at first, neither did they seem to admire
anything that we had.
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