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
The land farther in, that is lower than what borders on the sea, was, so
much as we saw of it, very plain and even, partly savannahs, and partly
woodland. The savannahs bear a sort of thin coarse grass. The mould is
also a coarser sand than that by the sea side, and in some places ’tis
clay. Here are a great many rocks in the large savannah we were in,
which are five or six foot high, and round at the top like a haycock,
very remarkable, some red and some white. The woodland lies farther in
still, where there were divers sorts of small trees, scarce any three
foot in circumference; their bodies twelve or fourteen foot high, with a
head of small knibs or boughs. By the sides of the creeks, especially
nigh the sea, there grow a few small black mangrove trees.
There are but few land animals. I saw some lizards, and my men saw two
or three beasts like hungry wolves, lean like so many skeletons, being
nothing but skin and bones: ’tis probable that it was the foot of one of
those beasts that I mention’d as seen by us in N. Holland (vol. i, p.
463). We saw a rackoon or two, and one small speckled snake.
The land fowls that we saw here were crows (just such as ours in
England), small hawks, and kites, a few of each sort; but here are
plenty of small turtledoves, that are plump, fat, and very good meat.
Here are two or three sorts of smaller birds, some as big as larks, some
less; but not many of either sort. The sea fowl are pelicans, boobies,
noddies, curlews, sea-pies, etc., and but few of these neither.
The sea is plentifully stock’d with the largest whales that I ever saw,
but not to compare with the vast ones of the northern seas. We saw also
a great many green turtle, but caught none; here being no place to set a
turtle net in; here being no channel for them, and the tides running so
strong. We saw some sharks and paracoots, and with hooks and lines we
caught some rock fish and old wives. Of shell fish here were oysters,
both of the common kind for eating and of the pearl kind; and also
wilks, conchs, muscles, limpits, perriwinkles, etc.; and I gather’d a
few strange shells, chiefly a sort not large, and thick-set all about
with rays or spikes growing in rows.
And thus, having ranged about a considerable time upon this coast,
without finding any good fresh water or any convenient place to clean
the ship, as I had hop’d for; and it being, moreover, the heighth of the
dry season, and my men growing scorbutick for want of refreshments, so
that I had little incouragement to search further; I resolved to leave
this coast, and accordingly in the beginning of September set sail
towards Timor.
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