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
We saw a great many places where they had made fires, and where there
were commonly three or four boughs stuck up to the windward of them; for
the wind (which is the sea breeze) in the daytime blows always one way
with them, and the land breeze is but small. By their fireplaces we
should always find great heaps of fish shells of several sorts; and ’tis
probable that these poor creatures here lived chiefly on the shell fish,
as those I before describ’d did on small fish, which they caught in
wires or holes in the sand at low water. These gather’d their shell fish
on the rocks at low water, but had no wires (that we saw) whereby to get
any other sorts of fish: as among the former I saw not any heaps of
shells as here, though I know they also gather’d some shell fish. The
lances also of those were such as these had; however, they being upon an
island, with their women and children, and all in our power, they did
not there use them against us as here on the continent, where we saw
none but some of the men under head, who come out purposely to observe
us. We saw no houses at either place; and I believe they have none,
since the former people on the island had none, tho’ they had all their
families with them.
Upon returning to my men I saw that tho’ they had dug eight or nine foot
deep, yet found no water. So I return’d aboard that evening, and the
next day, being September 1st, I sent my boatswain ashore to dig deeper,
and sent the sain with him to catch fish. While I staid aboard I
observed the flowing of the tide, which runs very swift here, so that
our nun-buoy would not bear above the water to be seen. It flows here
(as on that part of N. Holland I described formerly) about five fathom;
and here the flood runs S.E. by S. till the last quarter; then it sets
right in towards the shore (which lies here S.S.W. and N.N.E.) and the
ebb runs N.W. by N. When the tides slackned we fish’d with hook and
line, as we had already done in several places on this coast, on which
in this voyage hitherto we had found but little tides; but by the
heighth, and strength, and course of them hereabouts, it should seem
that if there be such a passage or streight going through eastward to
the great South Sea, as I said one might suspect, one would expect to
find the mouth of it somewhere between this place and Rosemary Island,
which was the part of New Holland I came last from.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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