A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 13 eBook

Robert Kerr (writer)
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 794 pages of information about A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 13.

A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 13 eBook

Robert Kerr (writer)
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 794 pages of information about A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 13.

While we lay becalmed, several canoes came off to us, but the people having heard of our guns, it was not without great difficulty that they were persuaded to come under our stern:  After having bought some of their clothes, as well as their fish, we began to make enquiries concerning their county, and learnt, by the help of Tupia, that, at the distance of three days rowing in their canoes, at a place called Moore-wennua, the land would take a short turn to the southward, and from thence extend no more to the west.  This place we concluded to be the land discovered by Tasman, which he called Cape Maria van Diemen, and finding these people so intelligent, we enquired farther, if they knew of any country besides their own:  They answered, that they never had visited any other, but that their ancestors had told them, that to the N.W. by N. or N.N.W. there was a country of great extent, called Ulimaroa, to which some people had sailed in a very large canoe; that only part of them returned, and reported, that after a passage of a month they had seen a country where the people eat hogs.  Tupia then enquired whether these adventurers brought any hogs with them when they returned?  They said No:  Then, replied Tupia, your story is certainly false, for it cannot be believed that men who came back from an expedition without hogs, had ever visited a country where hogs were to be procured.  It is however remarkable, notwithstanding the shrewdness of Tupia’s objection, that when they mentioned hogs it was not by description but by name, calling them Booah, the name which is given them in the South-sea islands; but if the animal had been wholly unknown to them, and they had no communication with people to whom it was known, they could not possibly have been acquainted with the name.

About ten o’clock at night, a breeze sprung up at W.N.W. with which we stood off north; and at noon the next day, the Cavalles bore S.E. by E. distant eight leagues; the entrance of Doubtless Bay S. by W. distant three leagues; and the north-west extremity of the land in sight, which we judged to be the main, bore N.W. by W.:  Our latitude by observation was 34 deg. 44’ S. In the evening, we found the variation to be 12 deg.41’ E. by the azimuth, and 12 deg. 40’ by the amplitude.

Early in the morning, we stood in with the land, seven leagues to the westward of Doubtless Bay, the bottom of which is not far distant from the bottom of another large bay, which the shore forms at this place, being separated only by a low neck of land, which juts out into a peninsula that I have called Knuckle Point.  About the middle of this Bay, which we called Sandy Bay, is a high mountain, standing upon a distant shore, to which I gave the name of Mount Camel.  The latitude here is 84 deg. 51’ S. and longitude 186 deg. 50’.  We had twenty-four and twenty-five fathom water, with a good bottom; but there seems to be nothing in this bay that can induce a ship to put

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A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 13 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.