sort of small, red, hard pulse, growing in cods also, with little black eyes like beans.  I know not their names, but have seen them used often in the East Indies for weighing gold; and they make the same use of them at Guinea, as I have heard, where the women also make bracelets with them to wear about their arms.  These grow on bushes; but here are also a fruit like beans growing on a creeping sort of shrub-like vine.  There was great plenty of all these sorts of cod-fruit growing on the sandhills by the seaside, some of them green, some ripe, and some fallen on the ground:  but I could not perceive that any of them had been gathered by the natives; and might not probably be wholesome food.

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 seaside, and in some places it is clay.  Here are a great many rocks in the large savannah we were in, which are 5 or 6 foot high, and round at 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 12 or 14 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:  it is probable that it was the foot of one of those beasts that I mentioned as seen by us in New Holland.  We saw a raccoon 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 2 or 3 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 stocked 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 shellfish, here were oysters both of the common kind for eating, and of the pearl kind:  and also wilks, conches, mussels, limpets, periwinkles, etc., and I gathered 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 hoped for:  and it being moreover the height of the dry season, and my men growing scorbutic for want of refreshments, so that I had little encouragement to search further, I resolved to leave this coast and accordingly in the beginning of September set sail towards Timor.