[50] Voor aen den steven—forward in the stem (of the boat). [↑]
[51] Te landtwaert in—towards the land. [↑]
[52] Rotgansen—brent geese or “barnacle” geese, as they were called, owing to the absurd idea which formerly prevailed as to their origin. [↑]
[53] Rot, rot, rot. It is certainly singular that the translator should have attempted to render into English what is intended to represent the natural cry of these birds. But even in this strange attempt he made a mistake; for “red” is in Dutch rood, while rot means a rout, crowd, flock, rabble; so that, in the opinion of some, these geese are called rotgansen in Dutch, on account of their flocking together. [↑]
[54] Dit waren oprechte rotgansen—these were true brent geese. Apart from Phillip’s very curious “translation”, it is difficult to imagine how he could have supposed these geese to be of “a perfit red coulor”. And it is scarcely less incomprehensible how Barrow, in his Chronological History, etc., p. 147, should have reproduced this and other errors of Phillip without the slightest comment. By a contemporary writer, in the passage cited in the next page, the brent goose is well described as “a fowle bigger than a mallard, and lesser than a goose, having blacke legs and bill or beake, and feathers blacke and white, spotted in such manner as is our mag-pie”. It is figured and also described in the fifth volume of Gould’s Birds of Europe. [↑]
[55] Wieringen, an island of North Holland, near the Texel. [↑]
[56] Aen boomen wassen—grow upon trees. [↑]
[57] Ende de tacken die overt water hangen ende haer vruchten int water vallen—and those branches which hang over the water, and the fruit of which falls into the water. [↑]
[58] Swemmen daer hennen—swim away. [↑]
[59] Comen te niet—come to nothing. This extraordinary fable concerning the origin of these geese, which was prevalent in the sixteenth century, and was credited by the best informed naturalists and most learned scholars, is, at the present day, retained in our memory principally by Izaak Walton’s quotation from Divine Weekes and Workes of Du Bartas:—