I did not perceive that they did worship anything. These poor creatures have a sort of weapon to defend their ware or fight with their enemies, if they have any that will interfere with their poor fishery. They did endeavour with their weapons to frighten us, who, lying ashore, deterr’d them from one of their fishing places. Some of them had wooden swords, others had a sort of lances. The sword is a piece of wood, shaped somewhat like a cutlass. The lance is a long strait pole, sharp at one end, and hardened afterwards by heat. I saw no iron, nor any other sort of metal; therefore it is probable they use stone hatchets, as some Indians in America do, described in chapter iv.
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 tryed 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 sharpening it at one end like a pencil, they put that sharp end in the hole or dent of the flat soft juice, and then rubbing or twirling the hard piece between the palms 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 that they said. We anchored, as I said before, January the 5th, and seeing men walking on the shore, we presently set a canoe to get some acquaintance with them, for we were in hopes to get some provisions among them. But the inhabitants, seeing our boat coming, run away and hid themselves. We searched afterwards three days, in hopes to find their houses; but found none; yet we saw many places where they had made fires. At last, being out of hopes to find their habitations, we searched no farther; but left a great many toys ashore, in such places where we thought that they would come. In all our search we found no water, but old wells on the sandy bays.
At last 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, at our first coming ashore, threatened us with their lances and swords; but they were frighted by firing one gun, which we fired purposely to scare them. The island was so small that they could not hide themselves; but they were much disordered at our landing, especially the women and children, for we went directly to their camp. The lustiest of the women snatching up their infants ran away howling, and the little children run after squeaking and bawling, but the men stood still. Some of the women, and such people as could not go from us, lay still by a fire, making a doleful noise as if we had been coming to devour them; but when they saw that we did not intend to harm them they were pretty quiet, and the rest that fled from us at our first coming returned again. This, their place of dwelling, was only a fire, with a few boughs before it, set up on that side the wind was of.
After we had been here a little while the men began to be familiar, and we cloathed 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 being somewhat troublesome to carry to the canoes, we thought to have made these men to have carried it for us, and therefore we gave them some cloathes; to one an old pair of breeches, to another a ragged shirt, to a 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 wells, and put a barrel on each of their shoulders for them to carry to the canoa. 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 cloathes off again and laid them down, as if cloathes 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 that we had.
At another time, our canoa being among these islands seeking for game, espy’d a drove of these men swimming from one island to another; for they have no boats, canoes, or bark-logs. They took up four of them and brought them aboard; two of them were middle aged, the other two were 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 any thing in 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 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, but the islanders, after our first time of being among them, did not stir for us.
When we had been here about a week, we hal’d our ship into a small sandy cove, at a spring-tide, as far as she would float; and at low water she was left dry, and the sand dry without us near half a mile, for the sea riseth and falleth here about five fathoms. The flood runs north by east, and the ebb south by west. All the neep-tides we lay wholly aground, for the sea did not come near us by about a hundred yards. We had therefore time enough to clean our ship’s bottom, which we did very well. Most of our men lay ashore in a tent, where our sails were mending; and our strikers brought home turtle and manatee every day, which was our constant food.
While we lay here, I did endeavour to perswade our men to go to some English factory, but was threatened to be turned ashore and left here for it.
This made me desist, and patiently wait for some more convenient place and opportunity to leave them than here; which I did hope I should accomplish in a short time, because they did intend, when they went from hence, to bear down towards Cape Comorin. In their way thither they design’d to visit also the Island Cocos, which lieth in latitude 12° 12´ north, by our drafts: hoping there to find of that fruit, the island having its name from thence.