In the morning several canoes appeared full of blacks, who were allowed to come on board. As a token that they wished to be friendly, they broke some sticks they carried over the Dutchmen. Their canoes were very neatly formed, and they themselves were more civilised than the savages last visited. Their black hair was covered over with chalk. They came only to beg, having brought nothing with them, though cocoa-nut trees were seen in abundance on the shore. On the 1st of July the _Unity_ again anchored between an island and the coast of New Guinea. She was almost immediately surrounded by twenty-five canoes, carrying the same people who had before given tokens of peace. They now, however, came in a very different spirit; for several of them caught hold of two anchors which hung over the bows, and began tugging away, expecting to draw the ship ashore. The rest, coming up on either side, began, with loud shouts and cries, to hurl stones from their slings, and to cast their darts. On this Captain Schouten ordered the guns to be fired, when the shot quickly knocked the canoes to pieces, killed twelve or thirteen men, and wounded a much larger number, when the rest at once took to flight. The Dutch now continued their cruise round the northern end of New Guinea. Passing a large group of islands, twenty-three in number, of different sizes, some high, others low, most of them being left on the starboard side, their hearts were cheered by coming in sight of a lofty mountain, which they took to be the hill of Banda, but which was in reality several degrees of latitude off from it. On the 7th they approached a range of lofty hills, some of which they found were volcanoes, for which reason they named the island Volcano Island. It was thickly inhabited, and abounded in cocoa-nut trees. The people regarded the ship with evident terror, and would not come near her. Steering west-south-west, and occasionally altering their course to the west-north-west, they anchored on the 8th about a cannon-shot from the shore between two islands, one lofty and the other somewhat lower. It was inhabited by Papuans, whose mode of bedecking themselves, owing to their natural deformity, made them literally appear like monsters. Nearly the whole of them had their limbs fearfully misshapen, besides which they had strings of hogs'-teeth hung about their necks, rings in their noses, their hair frizzled, and their faces black and ugly. Their habitations were remarkable, being light structures of bamboo, mounted on stakes eight or nine feet above the ground, and close to the water. There were two villages near the shore, from whence the inhabitants brought off hogs and cocoa-nuts, but so high a price was demanded that none were purchased.