Early Australian Voyages: Pelsart, Tasman, Dampier eBook

John Pinkerton
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 173 pages of information about Early Australian Voyages.

Early Australian Voyages: Pelsart, Tasman, Dampier eBook

John Pinkerton
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 173 pages of information about Early Australian Voyages.

There were but few land fowls.  We saw none but eagles of the larger sorts of birds, but five or six sorts of small birds.  The biggest sort of these were not bigger than larks, some no bigger than wrens, all singing with great variety of fine shrill notes; and we saw some of their nests with young ones in them.  The water-fowls are ducks (which had young ones now, this being the beginning of the spring in these parts), curlews, galdens, crab-catchers, cormorants, gulls, pelicans, and some water-fowl, such as I have not seen anywhere besides.

The land animals that we saw here were only a sort of raccoons, different from those of the West Indies, chiefly as to their legs, for these have very short forelegs, but go jumping upon them as the others do (and like them are very good meat), and a sort of guanos, of the same shape and size with other guanos described, but differing from them in three remarkable particulars; for these had a larger and uglier head, and had no tail, and at the rump, instead of the tail there, they had a stump of a tail, which appeared like another head, but not really such, being without mouth or eyes; yet this creature seemed by this means to have a head at each end, and, which may be reckoned a fourth difference, the legs also seemed all four of them to be forelegs, being all alike in shape and length, and seeming by the joints and bending to be made as if they were to go indifferently either head or tail foremost.  They were speckled black and yellow like toads, and had scales or knobs on their backs like those of crocodiles, plated on to the skin, or stuck into it, as part of the skin.  They are very slow in motion, and when a man comes nigh them they will stand still and hiss, not endeavouring to get away.  Their livers are also spotted black and yellow; and the body, when opened, hath a very unsavoury smell.  I did never see such ugly creatures anywhere but here.  The guanos I have observed to be very good meat, and I have often eaten of them with pleasure; but though I have eaten of snakes, crocodiles, and alligators, and many creatures that look frightfully enough, and there are but few I should have been afraid to eat of if pressed by hunger, yet I think my stomach would scarce have served to venture upon these New Holland guanos, both the looks and the smell of them being so offensive.

The sea-fish that we saw here (for here was no river, land or pond of fresh water to be seen) are chiefly sharks.  There are abundance of them in this particular sound, that I therefore gave it the name of Shark’s Bay.  Here are also skates, thornbacks, and other fish of the ray kind (one sort especially like the sea-devil), and gar-fish, bonetas, etc.  Of shell-fish we got here mussels, periwinkles, limpets, oysters, both of the pearl kind and also eating oysters, as well the common sort as long oysters, besides cockles, etc.  The shore was lined thick with many other sorts of very strange and beautiful shells for variety of colour and shape, most finely spotted with red, black, or yellow, etc., such as I have not seen anywhere but at this place.  I brought away a great many of them, but lost all except a very few, and those not of the best.

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Early Australian Voyages: Pelsart, Tasman, Dampier from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.