(Footnote.  Hawkesworth Coll.  Volume 3 page 277 et seq.)

The beach was lined with the areca, or fan-palm tree, from which the well-known liquor called toddy is procured.  During our conference with these people they were all busily employed in eating the fruit spike of the piper betle,* which they first thickly covered with shell-lime; after chewing it for some time, they spit it out into the hand of the attendant slave who completes the exhaustion of this luxurious morceau by conveying it to his own mouth.

(Footnote.  Persoon, in his description of areca catechu, makes the following observation:  E fructu ab extima pellicula libero, simul cum foliis piperis betle, addito pauxillo calcis ex ostreis, fit masticatorium, quod Indiani continue volvunt in ore, ut malus anhelitus corrigatur, et dentes ac stomachus roborentur.  Persoon, Syn.  Plant. pars. 2 577.)

They have a small-sized breed of horses at Savu, similar to that of Rottee; and pigs, sheep, and poultry appeared to be very plentiful.  No observations were taken during our stay in Zeba Bay.  The tides were scarcely perceptible and their rise and fall uncertain from the steep bank on which we had anchored.

After quitting the bay we made every possible progress towards Timor; and as long as we kept between the Islands of Savu and Rottee we found no perceptible current against us, although the wind was constantly from the South-East.

October 26.

On the 26th the contents of one of our remaining casks of water was found to be so bad that it could not be used for any purpose; upon examination it turned out that the cask had been constructed at Port Jackson of the staves of old salt-provision barrels.  This loss, amounting to two days’ water, we could but ill spare:  two or three gallons were collected from the rain which fell during the evening; and this trifling supply, although it had a tarry taste, was acceptable in our present circumstances.

The next morning was calm.  A small coasting proa was seen to the northward but soon afterwards lost sight of, steering towards Timor.

October 28.

At daylight (28th) land was seen bearing East 1/2 North; at noon our latitude was nine degrees 45 minutes 32 seconds; and by the morning and evening sights for the chronometers a current had set us to the North 81 degrees West at nearly one mile and a quarter per hour.  The wind, hanging between South-East and South-South-East, prevented our tacking to the southward to get out of the current, which, on our first experiencing it, was thought to have been occasioned by a set through the strait of Rottee; it was however afterwards found that we were on the southern edge of the current that sets to the westward, down the north coast of Timor, and that between Rottee and Savu the current is of trifling consequence.

October 29.

The next morning land was again indistinctly seen bearing East 12 degrees South.  At ten a.m. it was clearly visible, as well as a peaked hill which bore East 1/2 North.  We were now in a current setting rapidly to the westward and soon lost a great portion of the ground that we had been so long toiling to gain.  In the evening the wind veering to East-South-East enabled us to steer to the southward and to get out of the influence of the current.