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
They however possess nothing which is of value themselves, and have
neither iron nor anything like mineral ore or metal, but only a stone
which is ground and made to serve as a hatchet. They have no
habitations, either houses or huts; and feed on fish, which they catch
with harpoons of wood, and also by means of nets, putting out to sea in
small canoes, made of the bark of trees, which are in themselves so
fragile, that it is necessary to strengthen them with cross-beams.
Some of them had marks on their body, apparently cut or carved, which,
as it seemed to our people, were looked upon by them as a kind of
ornament. They eat sparingly and moderately, whereby they grow up always
active and nimble; their diet seems to consist of fish, and a few roots
and vegetables, but no birds or wild animals of any kind are used as
food, for though animal food exists, and was found by our men in
abundance, the natives appeared to be indifferent to it.
According to the notes of the captain of the sloop _Waijer_, from the
14th of June, about five hundred people with women and children, were
met on one occasion about two miles inland; at night also they were
descried sitting round several fires among the bushes; nothing however
was seen in their possession of any value. Our men might also easily
have taken and brought over to Batavia with them, two or three of the
natives who daily came on board, but the skipper of the _Vossenbosch_,
following out his instructions to the letter, would not allow them to be
taken without their full consent, either by falsehood or fraud, and as
no one understood their language, nothing was to be done in the matter;
consequently they remained in their own country.
The country here is for the most part level, and no mountains are to be
seen, except a remarkable eminence, which at a distance has the
appearance of three mountains, as noted in the journal of the skipper,
under date May the 25th. The soil seems productive, if cultivated, but
the whole extent of the coast is bordered by sands or downs. In no part
were any remarkable trees noticed, much less any of an aromatic and
spice kind.
The second bay after the Rooseboom’s Bay just described, between Tigers
and Wolfs-point, visited by our countrymen, has the appearance of a wide
river, but is salt; as however nothing remarkable was found there, we
shall let the journal of the skipper, on the date May 12th, speak for
itself, it being described in the account of the commander of the
_Waijer_, under the name of the Bessia River.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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