Pioneers in Australasia

by Harry Johnston

AUSTRALASIA
on Mercator's Projection

Of course the arrival at the Island of Guam (or Guahan, as it was called by the natives) did not mean necessarily that they would at once obtain provisions, because the island, unlike Mas-a-tierra (Juan Fernandez), was strongly fortified and garrisoned by the Spaniards, who kept it, naturally, for the relief and refreshment of Spanish ships alone, those engaged in the transit between the Philippine Islands and the west coast of America. Guam produced in those days rice, pineapples, melons, oranges, limes, bread-fruit, and, above all, coconuts. Upon their first arrival Captain Swan pretended that he and his men were Spaniards. By this means they induced a Spanish priest with three natives of the island to come on board. These they held as hostages, sending word, through them, to the governor of the island of Guam that Captain Swan was badly in want of provisions, was of peaceable intent, and prepared to purchase the same on reasonable terms. Meantime the seamen, including Dampier, landed with little ceremony and brought off quantities of coconuts—as to which Dampier wrote in rapturous terms, noting the delicious liquid preserved in the cavity of the coconut, the flesh of the nut, and the sweet sap drawn from the tree which made either a kind of wine "very sweet and pleasant if it is to be drunk within twenty-four hours after being drawn" and capable of becoming a very alcoholic liquid when fermented. "The kernel", he writes, "is much used in making broth. When the nut is dry they take off the husk, and giving two good blows on the middle of the nut it breaks in two equal parts, letting the water fall on the ground; then with a small iron rasp made for the purpose the kernel or nut is rasped out clean, which being put into a little fresh water, makes it become white as milk. In this milky water they boil a fowl or any other sort of flesh, and it makes very savoury broth. English seamen put this water into boiled rice, which they eat instead of rice-milk, carrying nuts purposely to sea with them. This they learn from the natives."

The Governor of Guam, partly through fear, but also pleased at the presents sent to him by Captain Swan, furnished the two ships with a variety and an abundance of provisions, so that they were able to go on their way to the Philippine Islands, of which Dampier wrote an excellent description, which may be read in his book.[54]

The powerful chiefs of the large islands in the Philippine archipelago in those days had not been subdued by the Spaniards, and therefore considered themselves quite free to trade with the English ships. But during the long stay off the island of Mindanao the seamen got out of hand, and mutinied against Captain Swan's projects of founding some establishment for trading purposes in the Philippine Islands. A section of the expedition elected John Read, a young navigator, with Captain Teat as sailing master of the ship, to command them. With Dampier amongst them they then sailed away from Mindanao leaving Swan[55] and thirty-six of his men behind. After cruising about the rest of the Philippine Islands and visiting the coasts of Tonquin, Siam, the Island of Formosa, and southern China, they made for the Island of Timor, intending to pass out that way from the Malay Archipelago into the Indian Ocean, and so return to England by the way of the Cape of Good Hope. On their way thither they anchored before the Dutch fort of Macassar on the remarkable island of Celebes. Here an allusion is made to buffaloes[56] (which they did not see), and to "crockadores" (cockatoos) "as big as a parrot, shaped like it, and with a smaller bill, but as white as milk, with a bunch of feathers on its head like a crown."

In the month of December, 1687, Dampier, with his companions, had passed the Island of Timor, which he described as long, high, and mountainous, and already a part of the Malay Archipelago specially appropriated by the Portuguese. The commanders of the vessel (Read and Teat) now proposed to "touch at New Holland, a part of Terra Australis Incognita, to see what that country would afford us". After avoiding with great care shoals and reefs, they anchored on 5 January, 1688, two miles from the shore, at the mouth, probably, of King Sound on the north-west coast of Australia; an inlet in which there were numerous islands, at that time somewhat densely inhabited by the aborigines. Dampier must have landed with many of his companions, otherwise he could not have given such a realistic description of this part of Australia and its inhabitants. He describes the land (which he, like the Dutch discoverers who had preceded him, guessed at once to be of continental extent) as having a dry, sandy soil, and being very destitute of water, though it was possible to sink wells and obtain it not far from the surface, yet this part of Tropical Australia produced various kinds of trees growing separately and sparsely, and not in forests. The most prominent tree in the region he visited was a species of Dracæna or tree-lily, which was the biggest seen in that neighbourhood. He at once saw the resemblance between these tree-lilies and the Dragon tree of Tropical Asia, which produced the dark-coloured gum known as dragons' blood. Under the trees grew long, thin grass, but both animals and birds seem to have been scarce; in fact, Dampier and his companions saw no beast, but only the track of one, which suggested the existence of something as big as a "great mastiff dog". This may have been the footprints of a dingo. On the beach there were turtle and also dugongs.[57]

Dampier writes more about the natives of Australia rather than its products or landscapes. He describes them as "the miserablest people in the world", beside whom the Hodmadods (Hottentots) of South Africa were gentlemen. These aboriginal Australians had no houses or skin garments, no domestic animals, and no cultivated forms of vegetable food. They had great bottle noses, pretty full lips and wide mouths, from which the two middle incisor teeth of the upper jaw were wanting, having been extracted from the people of both sexes whilst they were still children. Their faces were long and their heads disproportionately big, with very projecting brows. The eyelids were kept half-closed because of the pest of flies for ever trying to get into their eyes. The head-hair was black, short, and curled, like that of Negroes, and (curiously enough) they had no beards. (This is a strange remark on the part of Dampier, and almost suggests that at this time that broad portion of north-west Australia which he visited was inhabited by a Papuan race from New Guinea, for if there is one thing for which the typical Australian aborigine is noteworthy it is the abundance of the beard in the men. Even the women of middle age frequently grow short whiskers and a tuft of beard at the chin.) The colour of their skins was coal black, like that of the Negroes of Guinea. They were tall, slender people, with somewhat delicate limbs. They had no sort of clothing, but round the waist was tied a girdle of bark, and into this was thrust occasionally a handful of long grass or three or four small green boughs full of leaves. There were no signs of any houses, the people sleeping on the ground in the open air. But they generally slept round about a fire, and would sometimes stick a few branches in the ground as a shelter from the prevailing wind. From his description they evidently possessed the wooden boomerang and wooden lances or spears, the ends of which were hardened by heat. They seemed to have no boats or even rafts, but they were good swimmers, and were observed swimming from one island to another. Their food seemed to consist almost entirely of fish, which they caught by making weirs of stones across little inlets of the sea, in such a way that the high tides brought the fish up these inlets and left them stranded behind the weirs. They also sought diligently for shellfish along the shore. They were acquainted with the use of fire, and boiled the fish, the clams, the mussels, oysters, and periwinkles which they obtained from the seashore, carefully distributing all the food they thus acquired amongst the old people and the children as well as the able-bodied who procured it. After eating they would lie down and sleep until it was necessary to sally out again at low water and obtain fresh supplies of fish food. Their language seemed to be very guttural.

Dampier and his companions sailed away from north-west Australia to the Cocos or Coconut Islands in the Indian Ocean, which long afterwards were settled by enterprising Scotsmen, and have become a British possession of some little value. From the Cocos Islands they made their way back to Sumatra and the mainland of Indo-China. By this time he had become thoroughly sick of the buccaneers and their piratical ways, and, after making one or two vain attempts to escape, he, with two companions, extorted an unwilling permission from Captain Read to be left behind on the Nicobar Islands (between Sumatra and the Andamans). One of the seamen who rowed them ashore out of kindliness stole an axe and gave it to the party of three Englishmen, "knowing it was a good commodity with the Indians".[58]

When they landed it was dark, so Dampier lighted a candle and conducted his companions to one of the native houses, where they hung up their hammocks. They were later joined by a Portuguese interpreter and four Achin Malay seamen. "It was a fine, clear moonlight night in which we were left ashore, therefore we walked on the sandy bay to watch when the ship should weigh and be gone, not thinking ourselves secure in our new gotten liberty till then." However, at midnight the pirate vessel sailed away, and Dampier and his companions went peacefully to sleep. The next day they bought from their native landlord a canoe for the axe, and, putting their chests and clothes in it, decided to go to the south of the island and wait there till the monsoon had shifted and the wind was favourable for a passage across to the north end of Sumatra. But no sooner was their canoe launched, with all their goods and men in it, than it capsized and the party were obliged to save their lives by swimming. Their boxes and clothes were also saved, and Dampier applied himself most assiduously to the drying of his precious journal and drawings. During the next three days the Achinese seamen of their party (who had been members of the crew of a native vessel seized by the pirates) had arranged outriggers to the canoe, fitted her with a good mast, and made a substantial sail of mats. Their canoe thus steadied, they put off once more to sea, and so sailed southwards to another island. Here, through an unfortunate accident, they caused the natives to think that they came as enemies. By a bold manœuvre, organized by Dampier, friendship was concluded with them and "all very joyfully accepted of a peace. This became universal over all the islands, to the great joy of the inhabitants.... Gladness appeared in their countenances, and now we could go out and fish again without fear of being taken. This peace was not more welcome to them than to us.... They again brought their mellory to us, which we bought for old rags." The loaves of mellory, of which Dampier writes so much and so gratefully, for it was sometimes the only sustenance he had in these adventures, were derived from the local bread-fruit, either identical with the species of the Pacific islands or belonging to an allied kind of Artocarpus[59].