Whilst in Hanover Bay, a skirmish with the natives enlivened proceedings. In spite of all the many warnings the party had received by this time, they would venture amongst the natives quite unarmed, and when their men came to their assistance the muskets, as a rule, would not go off. This time the surgeon, Mr. Montgomery, was speared in the back—fortunately, not fatally.
From Hanover Bay, King sailed some distance to the westward, anchoring on August 21st, near the Lacepede Islands. The next day Cape Baskerville was named, and the smoke of fires was noticed at intervals for miles along the shore; from which one might infer that this part of the coast was very populous. Captain Dampier saw forty Indians together on one of the rocky islands to the eastward of Cape Levêque, and in his quaint description of them says:—
"The inhabitants of this country are the miserablest people in the world. The Hodmadods, of Monomatapa, though a nasty people, yet for wealth are gentlemen to these, who have no houses and skin garments, sheep, poultry, and fruits of the earth, ostrich eggs, etc., as the Hodmadods have; and, setting aside their human shape, they differ but little from brutes. They are tall, straight-bodied, and thin, with small, long limbs. They have great heads, round foreheads, and great brows. Their eye-lids are always half-closed to keep the flies out of their eyes, they being so troublesome here that fanning will not keep them from coming to one's face; and without the assistance of both hands to keep them off, they will creep into one's nostrils, and mouth too, if the lips are not shut very close. So that, from infancy, being thus annoyed with those insects, they do never open their eyes as other people; and therefore they cannot see far unless they hold up their heads, as if they were looking at somewhat over them. They have great bottle noses, pretty full lips, and wide mouths. The two fore-teeth of their upper jaw are wanting in all of them, men and women, old and young. Whether they draw them out or not I know not. Neither have they any beards. They are long-visaged, and of a very unpleasant aspect, having not one graceful feature in their faces. Their hair is black, short, and curled like that of the negroes; and not long and lank like the common Indians. The colour of their skins, both of their faces and the rest of their body, is coal-black like that of the negroes of Guinea. They have no sort of clothes but a piece of the rind of a tree tied like a girdle about their waists, and a handful of long grass, or three or four small green boughs full of leaves thrust under their girdle to cover their nakedness. They. have no houses, but lie in the open air without covering, the earth being their bed and heaven their canopy.
"They live in companies-twenty or thirty men, women, and children together. Their only food is a small sort of fish, which they get by making weirs of stone across little coves or branches of the sea, every tide bringing in the small fish, and there leaving them a prey to these people, who constantly attend there to search for them at low water. This small fry I take to be the top of their fishery. They have no instruments to catch great fish should they come, and such seldom stay to be left behind at low water; nor could we catch any fish with our hooks and lines while we lay there. In other places, at low water, they seek for cockles, mussels, and periwinkles; of these shell-fish there are fewer still, so that their chief dependency is upon what the sea leaves in their weirs, which, be it much or little, they gather tip and march to the places of their abode. There is neither herb, root, pulse, nor any sort of grain for them to eat that we saw, nor any sort of bird or beast that they can catch, having no instruments. I did not perceive that they did worship anything. These poor people have a sort of weapon to defend their weirs or fight with their enemies, if they have any, that will interfere with their poor fishery. They did at first endeavour with their weapons to frighten us, who, lying ashore, deterred them from one of their fishing places. Some of them had wooden swords, others had a sort of lance. The sword is a long, straight pole, sharp at one end, and hardened afterwards by heat. I saw no iron, nor any sort of metal; therefore, it is probable they use stone hatchets. How they get their fire I know not, but, probably, as Indians do, out of wood. I have seen the Indians of Bon-Airy do it, and have myself tried the experiment. They take a flat piece of wood that is pretty soft, and make a small dent in one side of it; then they take another hard, round stick, about the bigness of one's little finger and sharpened at one end like a pencil; they put that sharp end in the hole or dent of the flat, soft piece, and then rubbing or twirling the hard piece between the palm of their hands, they drill the soft piece till it smokes and, at last, takes fire.
"These people speak somewhat through the throat, but we could not understand one word they said. . . . We went over to the islands, and there we found a great many of the natives. I do believe there were forty on one island—men, women, and children. The men, on our first coming ashore, threatened us with their lances and swords, but they were frightened by firing our gun, which we purposely fired over their heads. The island was so small that they could not hide themselves, but they were much disordered by our landing. This, their place of dwelling, was only a fire, with a few boughs before it, set up on the side the winds were off.
"After we had been here a little while, the men began to be familiar, and we clothed some of them, designing to have some service of them for it; for we found some wells of water here, and intended to carry two or three barrels of it aboard. But it being somewhat trouble some to carry to the canoes, we thought to have made these men to have carried it for us, and therefore, we gave them some old clothes; to one an old pair of breeches, to another a ragged shirt, to the third a jacket that was scarce worth owning, which yet would have been very acceptable at some places where we had been, and so we thought they might have been with these people. We put them on them, thinking that this finery would have brought them to work heartily for us; and our water being filled in small, long barrels, about six gallons in each, which were made purposely to carry water in, we brought these our new servants to the well, and put a barrel on each of their shoulders for them to carry to the canoe. But all the signs we could make were to no purpose, for they stood like statues, without motion, but grinned like so many monkeys, staring one upon another; for these poor creatures seem not accustomed to carry burthens, and I believe that one of our ship boys, of ten years old, would carry as much as one of them. So we were forced to carry our water ourselves, and they very fairly put the clothes off again, and laid them down, as if clothes were only to work in. I did not perceive that they had any great liking to them at first, neither did they seem to admire anything we had. Four men, captured while swimming, were brought aboard; two of them were middle aged, the other two young men about eighteen or twenty years old. To these we gave boiled rice, and with it turtle and manatee boiled. They did greedily devour what we gave them, but took no notice of the ship, or anything on it, and when they were set on land again, they ran away as fast as they could. At our first coming, before we were acquainted with them, or they with us, a company of them, who lived on the main, came just against our ship, and standing on a pretty high bank threatened us with their swords and lances, by shaking them at us; at last the captain ordered the drum to be beaten, which was done of a sudden with much vigour, purposely to scare the poor creatures. They, hearing the noise, ran away as fast as they could drive, and when they ran away in haste they would cry GURRY-GURRY, speaking deep down in the throat. Those inhabitants, also, that live on the main would always run away from us yet we took several of them. For, as I have already observed, they had such bad eyes that they could not see us till we came close to them; we did always give them victuals, and let them go again." ["Dampier." Vol. I, p464.]
August 20. King, when laying down the plan of the coast upon his chart, found Cape Levêque to be the point Dampier anchored under when on his buccaneering voyage in the CYGNET, 1688. In commemoration of his visit the name of Buccaneer's Archipelago was given to the islands that front Cygnet Bay, which bay is so named after his vessel; and on August 26, Roebuck Bay received its name after the ship Captain Dampier commanded when he visited this coast in 1699. Their water being nearly out, and the provisions generally being in a bad state, besides the want of a second anchor being very much felt, King deemed it prudent not to rely longer upon the good fortune that had attended them, but to sail for the Mauritius, entering Port Louis on September 26th.
On November 15th they were again ready for sea, and left the Mauritius to re-commence their survey on the south-west coast of New Holland. Sighting Cape Chatham, a course was directed to the eastward for King George's Sound, where they intended to get wood and water previous to commencing the examination, and anchored close to the entrance of Princess Royal Harbour. This harbour not proving suitable, their old anchorage in Oyster Harbour was taken up. The luxuriant growth of vegetation had almost entirely destroyed all traces of the visit of 1818. The garden in which Mr. Cunningham had planted seeds was covered with three or four feet of additional soil, formed of sand and decayed vegetable matter, and clothed with a thicket of plants in flower. The natives appeared to be very friendly, and some visited the vessel.
"After an absence of an hour our two friends returned, when it appeared that they had been at their toilet, for their noses and faces had evidently been fresh smeared over with red ochre, which they pointed out to us as a great ornament; affording another proof that vanity is inherent in human nature, and not merely the consequence of civilization.
"Two of them were watching a small seal that, having been left by the tide on the bank, was endeavouring to waddle towards the deep water. At last one of the natives, fixing his spear in its throwing-stick, advanced very cautiously, and when within ten or twelve yards, lanced it, and pierced the animal through the neck, when the other instantly ran up and stuck his spear into it also; and then, beating it about the head with a small hammer, very soon despatched it. This event collected the whole tribe to the spot, who assisted in landing their prize and washing the sand off the body. They then carried the animal to their fire, at the edge of the grass, and began to devour it even before it was dead. Curiosity induced Mr. Cunningham and myself to view this barbarous feast, and we landed about ten minutes after it had commenced. The moment the boat touched the sand the natives, springing up and throwing their spears away into the bushes, ran down towards us, and before we could land, had all seated themselves in the boat, ready to go on board, in as unceremonious a manner as passengers would seat themselves in a ferry-boat; but they were obliged to wait whilst we landed to witness their savage feast. On going to the place, we found an old man seated over the remains of the carcass, two-thirds of which had already disappeared. He was holding a long strip of the raw flesh in his left hand, and tearing it off the body with a sort of knife. A boy was also feasting with him, and both were too intent upon their breakfast to notice us, or to be the least disconcerted at our looking on. We, however, were very soon satisfied, and walked away perfectly disgusted with the sight of so horrible a repast, and the intolerable stench occasioned by the effluvia that arose from the dying animal, combined with that of the bodies of the natives, who had daubed themselves from head to foot with a pigment made of redocherous earth, mixed up with seal-oil. Returning on board, the natives were very attentive to the mixture of a pudding, and a few small dumplings were made and given to them, which they put on the bars of the fire-place, but, being too impatient to wait until they were baked, ate them in a doughy state, with much relish. One of them, an old man, was very attentive to the sail-makers cutting out a boat's sail, and, at his request, was presented with all the strips that were of no use. When it was completed, a small piece of canvas was missing. After a great search, in which the old rogue assisted, it was found secreted under his arm. The old man appeared ashamed and conscious of his guilt, and although he was frequently afterwards with us, yet he always hung down his head and sneaked into the background."