Early Voyages to Terra Australis, Now Called Australia: / A Collection of Documents, and Extracts from Early Manuscript Maps, Illustrative of the History of Discovery on the Coasts of That Vast Island, from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century to the Time of Captain Cook.

by Richard Henry Major

The 31st of August betimes in the morning, I went ashore with ten or eleven men to search for water. We went armed with muskets and cutlasses for our defence, expecting to see people there; and carried also shovels and pickaxes to dig wells. When we came near the shore we saw three tall black naked men on the sandy bay a-head of us: but as we row’d in, they went away. When we were landed, I sent the boat with two men in her to lie a little from the shore at an anchor, to prevent being seized; while the rest of us went after the three black men, who were now got on the top of a small hill, about a quarter of a mile from us, with eight or nine men more in their company. They seeing us coming, ran away. When we came on the top of the hill where they first stood, we saw a plain savannah, about half a mile from us, farther in from the sea. There were several things like hay cocks, standing in the savannah; which at a distance we thought were houses, looking just like the Hottentots’ houses at the cape of Good Hope: but we found them to be so many rocks. We searched about these for water, but could find none, nor any houses; nor people, for they were all gone. Then we turned again to the place where we landed, and there we dug for water.

While we were at work, there came nine or ten of the natives to a small hill a little way from us, and stood there menacing and threatning of us, and making a great noise. At last one of them came towards us, and the rest followed at a distance. I went out to meet him, and came within fifty yards of him, making to him all the signs of peace and friendship I could; but then he ran away, neither would they any of them stay for us to come nigh them, for we tried two or three times. At last I took two men with me, and went in the afternoon along by the sea side purposely to catch one of them, if I could, of whom I might learn where they got their fresh water. There were ten or twelve of the natives a little way off, who seeing us three going away from the rest of our men, followed us at a distance. I thought they would follow us; but there being for a while a sandbank between us and them, that they could not then see us, we made a halt, and hid ourselves in a bending of the sandbank. They knew we must be thereabouts, and being three or four times our number, thought to seize us. So they dispers’d themselves, some going to the sea shore, and others beating about the sand hills. We knew by what rencounter we had had with them in the morning that we could easily outrun them; so a nimble young man that was with me, seeing some of them near, ran towards them, and they for some time ran away before him. But he soon overtaking them, they faced about and fought him. He had a cutlass and they had wooden lances, with which, being many of them, they were too hard for him. When he first ran towards them, I chas’d two more that were by the shore; but fearing how it might be with my young man, I turn’d back quickly and went up to the top of a sandhill, whence I saw him near me closely engaged with them. Upon their seeing me one of them threw a lance at me, that narrowly miss’d me. I discharg’d my gun to scare them, but avoided shooting any of them; till finding the young man in great danger from them, and myself in some; and that tho’ the gun had a little frighted them at first, yet they had soon learnt to despise it, tossing up their heads and crying “Pooh, pooh, pooh,” and coming on afresh with a great noise; I thought it high time to charge again and shoot one of them, which I did. The rest seeing him fall made a stand again, and my young man took the opportunity to disengage himself and come off to me; my other man also was with me, who had done nothing all this while, having come out unarm’d; and I returned back with my men, designing to attempt the natives no farther, being very sorry for what had happened already. They took up their wounded companion, and my young man, who had been struck through the cheek by one of their lances, was afraid it had been poison’d, but I did not think that likely. His wound was very painful to him, being made with a blunt weapon; but he soon recover’d of it.

Among the N. Hollanders whom we were thus engaged with, there was one who by his appearance and carriage, as well in the morning as this afternoon, seem’d to be the chief of them, and a kind of prince or captain among them. He was a young brisk man, not very tall, nor so personable as some of the rest, tho’ more active and couragious: he was painted (which none of the rest were at all) with a circle of white paste or pigment (a sort of lime, as we thought) about his eyes, and a white streak down his nose from his forehead to the tip of it. And his breast and some part of his arms were also made white with the same paint; not for beauty or ornament one would think, but as some wild Indian warriors are said to do, he seem’d thereby to design the looking more terrible; this his painting added very much to his natural deformity, for they all of them have the most unpleasant looks and the worst features of any people that ever I saw, tho’ I have seen great variety of savages. These New Hollanders were probably the same sort of people as those I met with on this coast in my voyage round the world (see vol. i, p. 464, etc.); for the place I then touched at was not above forty or fifty leagues to the N.E. of this: and these were much the same blinking creatures (here being also abundance of the same kind of flesh-flies teizing them), and with the same black skins, and hair frizled, tall and thin, etc., as those were: but we had not the opportunity to see whether these, as the former, wanted two of their fore-teeth.

We saw a great many places where they had made fires, and where there were commonly three or four boughs stuck up to the windward of them; for the wind (which is the sea breeze) in the daytime blows always one way with them, and the land breeze is but small. By their fireplaces we should always find great heaps of fish shells of several sorts; and ’tis probable that these poor creatures here lived chiefly on the shell fish, as those I before describ’d did on small fish, which they caught in wires or holes in the sand at low water. These gather’d their shell fish on the rocks at low water, but had no wires (that we saw) whereby to get any other sorts of fish: as among the former I saw not any heaps of shells as here, though I know they also gather’d some shell fish. The lances also of those were such as these had; however, they being upon an island, with their women and children, and all in our power, they did not there use them against us as here on the continent, where we saw none but some of the men under head, who come out purposely to observe us. We saw no houses at either place; and I believe they have none, since the former people on the island had none, tho’ they had all their families with them.

Upon returning to my men I saw that tho’ they had dug eight or nine foot deep, yet found no water. So I return’d aboard that evening, and the next day, being September 1st, I sent my boatswain ashore to dig deeper, and sent the sain with him to catch fish. While I staid aboard I observed the flowing of the tide, which runs very swift here, so that our nun-buoy would not bear above the water to be seen. It flows here (as on that part of N. Holland I described formerly) about five fathom; and here the flood runs S.E. by S. till the last quarter; then it sets right in towards the shore (which lies here S.S.W. and N.N.E.) and the ebb runs N.W. by N. When the tides slackned we fish’d with hook and line, as we had already done in several places on this coast, on which in this voyage hitherto we had found but little tides; but by the heighth, and strength, and course of them hereabouts, it should seem that if there be such a passage or streight going through eastward to the great South Sea, as I said one might suspect, one would expect to find the mouth of it somewhere between this place and Rosemary Island, which was the part of New Holland I came last from.

Next morning my men came aboard and brought a rundlet of brackish water, which they got out of another well that they dug in a place a mile off, and about half as far from the shore; but this water was not fit to drink. However we all concluded that it would serve to boil our oatmeal for burgoo, whereby we might save the remains of our other water for drinking, till we should get more; and accordingly the next day we brought aboard four hogsheads of it: but while we were at work about the well we were sadly pester’d with the flies, which were more troublesome to us than the sun, tho’ it shone clear and strong upon us all the while, very hot. All this while we saw no more of the natives, but saw some of the smoaks of some of their fires at two or three miles distance.

The land hereabouts was much like the part of New Holland that I formerly described (vol. i, p. 463); ’tis low, but seemingly barricado’d with a long chain of sandhills to the sea, that lets nothing be seen of what is farther within land. At high water, the tides rising so high as they do, the coast shows very low; but when ’tis low water it seems to be of an indifferent heighth. At low water-mark the shore is all rocky, so that then there is no landing with a boat; but at high water a boat may come in over those rocks to the Sandy Bay, which runs all along on this coast. The land by the sea for about five or six hundred yards is a dry sandy soil, bearing only shrubs and bushes of divers sorts. Some of these had them at this time of the year, yellow flowers or blossoms, some blue and some white, most of them of a very fragrant smell. Some had fruit-like peascods, in each of which there were just ten small peas: I opened many of them, and found no more nor less. There are also here some of that sort of bean which I saw at Rosemary Island, and another sort of small, red, hard pulse, growing in cods also, with little black eyes like beans. I know not their names, but have seen them used often in the East Indies for weighing gold; and they make the same use of them at Guinea as I have heard, where the women also make bracelets with them to wear about their arms. These grow on bushes; but here are also a fruit like beans, growing on a creeping sort of shrub-like vine. There was great plenty of all these sorts of cod fruit growing on the sandhills by the sea side, some of them green, some ripe, and some fallen on the ground; but I could not perceive that any of them had been gathered by the natives, and might not probably be wholesome food.

The land farther in, that is lower than what borders on the sea, was, so much as we saw of it, very plain and even, partly savannahs, and partly woodland. The savannahs bear a sort of thin coarse grass. The mould is also a coarser sand than that by the sea side, and in some places ’tis clay. Here are a great many rocks in the large savannah we were in, which are five or six foot high, and round at the top like a haycock, very remarkable, some red and some white. The woodland lies farther in still, where there were divers sorts of small trees, scarce any three foot in circumference; their bodies twelve or fourteen foot high, with a head of small knibs or boughs. By the sides of the creeks, especially nigh the sea, there grow a few small black mangrove trees.

There are but few land animals. I saw some lizards, and my men saw two or three beasts like hungry wolves, lean like so many skeletons, being nothing but skin and bones: ’tis probable that it was the foot of one of those beasts that I mention’d as seen by us in N. Holland (vol. i, p. 463). We saw a rackoon or two, and one small speckled snake.

The land fowls that we saw here were crows (just such as ours in England), small hawks, and kites, a few of each sort; but here are plenty of small turtledoves, that are plump, fat, and very good meat. Here are two or three sorts of smaller birds, some as big as larks, some less; but not many of either sort. The sea fowl are pelicans, boobies, noddies, curlews, sea-pies, etc., and but few of these neither.