[50] Murderer's Bay, a name subsequently changed to Massacre Bay, or Golden Bay—from the later discovery of gold in this region.
[51] The largest of these islands was long associated in our minds with Alexander Selkirk and the story of Robinson Crusoe, though this wonderful piece of fiction was really concerned with the islands off the delta of the Orinoco River.
[52] The group consisted of two islands and an islet. The largest of the three was called Mas-a-tierra ("more towards the mainland"), and was 425 miles from the coast of Chile; the next largest was 100 miles farther west and called Mas-a-fuera ("farther away"). The islet near Mas-a-tierra was named Santa Clara. Mas-a-tierra was garrisoned by Spain in 1750.
[53] The three species of real turtle belonged two to the genus Chelone and one to Thallassochelys, viz. the Hawksbill Turtle, the shell of which is the tortoiseshell of commerce; the Green Turtle, which makes turtle soup, and is delicious to eat; and the musky-smelling useless Loggerhead Turtle. The fourth kind was the quite unrelated Leathery Turtle (Sphargis), which grows to a great size, 7 to 8 feet long.
[54] The best edition of Dampier's travels is that edited by John Masefield and published (in 1906) by E. Grant Richards.
[55] Swan was afterwards murdered by the natives.
[56] Dampier also alludes to the wild oxen of the Philippine Islands, which were in reality the very interesting Tamarao buffalo. The only wild buffaloes in Celebes would be the still more interesting Anoa peculiar to that island. Both the Tamarao and the Anoa offer resemblances in the horns and skull to extinct buffaloes once living in northern India. The Anoa is the smallest of the Ox tribe, and the most generalized type of living oxen; that is to say, the type which most resembles antelopes. It is quite a small creature, not much bigger than a very large sheep, and the horns are perfectly straight and directed backwards in a line with the nasal bones of the skull. The Anoa generally shows two white spots on each side of the cheeks, and white markings on the throat and legs (which reappear also in the Tamarao of the Philippine Islands), similar to the white spots and stripes in the Tragelaphine antelopes, like the Bush-buck, Kudu, and Nilghai.
[57] Called by Dampier manati, see pp. 40 and 165.
[58] The after career of the Cygnet and her crew, with her two captains, Read and Teat, was sufficiently remarkable to be briefly sketched. Some more of her men left her at the Philippines and entered the Royal Navy, wherein at least one of them rose to a very honourable command. Captain Teat, and thirty to forty stout seamen, quitted the Cygnet on the Coromandel coast and made their way to Agra, where they entered the bodyguard of the Mughal emperor. Read, joined by some more adventurers, took the Cygnet, over to Madagaskar, where, in alliance with a Sakalava chief, he played the pirate successfully. Wearying of this, he and some of his men turned slavers, and joined a ship which had come from New York to convey slaves from Madagaskar and East Africa to America. Read and his men went to New York, and quite possibly became the ancestors of excellent citizens of the United States. Other adventurers then proposed patching up the old Cygnet, whose bottom was honeycombed with the attacks of the Teredo boring worm, and sailing her back to England. They were obliged, however, to abandon her in St. Augustine's Bay (Southern Madagaskar), where she foundered.
[59] Several plants and animals which are found in Austro-Malaysia and the Western Pacific islands, but not in India or Further India, make their appearance in the Nicobars; amongst others the Megapode gallinaceous birds.