They swim from one iland to the other or toe and from the maine, and have for armes a lance sharpned at one end and burned in the fire to harden it, and a sword made with wood, which is sharpe on one side; these weapons, I judge, are cutt with stone hatchetts, as I have seene in the West India.
The country is all low land, with sand hills by the sea side; within it is a wood, but not extraordinary thicke; the chiefest trees are dragon trees, which are bigger then any other trees in the woods: wee found neither river, brooke, nor springs, but made wells in the sand, which aforded as good water, where wee watered our ships.
The first spring after wee came hither wee hail’d our ship into a sandy bay, where shee lay dry all the neepe tides, for it flows there right up and downe above five fathome; the flood setts north by east, and the ebb setts S. by W.
There are many turtle and manatoe in this bay, which our strikers supplyed us with all the time we lay here, and one time they mett some of the natives swimming from one iland to the other, and tooke up foure of them and brought aboard, whoe tooke noe notice of any thing that wee had noe more than a bruite would; wee gave them some victualls, which they greedily devoured, and being sett out of the ship ran away as fast as their leggs (for the ship was now dry on the sand) could carry them. Wee mett divers of them on the ilands, for they could not run from us there, but the women and children would be frighted at our approach.
Wee tarried here till the twelfth day of February, in which time wee cleaned our ship, mended our sailes, and filled our water; and when our time drew neare to depart from thence, I motioned goeing to Fort St. George, or any settlement where the English had noe fortification, and was threatened to be turned a shoare on New Holland for it; which made me desist, intending, by God’s blessing, to make my escape the first place I came neare, for wee were now bound into India for Cape Comorin, if wee could fetch it.
SOME PARTICULARS RELATING TO THE VOYAGE OF WILLEM DE VLAMINGH TO NEW HOLLAND IN 1696.
Extracted from MS. Documents at the Hague.
Of this expedition, which owes its origin to the loss of the ship De Ridderschap van Hollandt, between the Cape of Good Hope and Batavia, in the year 1685, reports are to be found in various works, as in Witsen, Valentijn, the Historische Beschrijving der Reizen, perhaps also in some others. No coherent account, however, appears to exist, although we read in the last-mentioned work that a narrative of the voyage was published in 1701, at Amsterdam.[[28]]
The project originally formed was, that the expedition should set out from Batavia, and the Directors of the Council of the Seventeen write on this understanding in their dispatch of November 10th, 1695, to the Governor-General and Council of India; but in the assembly of December 8th and 10th of that year[[29]] that plan was abandoned, and it was resolved that, “for various reasons,” the expedition should be undertaken from the Cape of Good Hope, under the command of William de Vlamingh, with orders to land at the islands of Tristan d’Acunha, on this side of the Cape, and also at the islands of St. Paul and Amsterdam, to examine and to survey them.
For this purpose three ships were fitted out: the frigate De Geelvinck, commodore Willem de Vlamingh; the hooker De Nijptang, Captain Gerrit Collaert; and the galiot Weseltje, Captain Cornelis de Vlamingh, son of the commodore.