[16] Captain Harris was commander of one of the privateer ships sailing in Spanish-American waters. When Captains Swan and Davis parted company he accompanied the latter. See Dampier’s Voyage, p. 224.
[17] Pigafetta in his relation of the first circumnavigation (VOL. XXXIV, p. 86) notes the word used by the inhabitants of the Moluccas for “one and the same thing” as “siama siama.”
[18] A ship captain whom Dampier (see chapter xviii) met at Achin on the island of Sumatra. Dampier and two of his companions started for Nicobar with him, but rough weather forced them to abandon the voyage. He importuned Dampier to make a voyage with him to Persia, but the latter declined, preferring to go to Tonquin with Captain Welden.
[19] Captain Philip Carteret, commander of the royal British sloop “Swallow,” in his account of his circumnavigation (1766–69) devotes his eighth chapter to “Some account of the Coast of Mindanao, and the Islands near it, in which several Mistakes of Dampier are corrected.” See this account in Collection of Voyages (printed for Richard Phillips, London, 1809), iii, pp. 352–361.
[20] Referring to the Basilan group, ten miles from the Mindanao coast; the largest island is Basilan, which has an area of four hundred and seventy-eight square miles, and there are forty-four dependent islands (fifty-seven, according to U. S. Gazetteer). (See Census of Philippines, i, p. 283.)
[21] Probably the small island of Guimaras, which lies between Negros and Panay, and which is approximately as described by Dampier. Sebo is, of course, Cebú; but Dampier evidently means Negros Island. The bay was Igan.
[22] Dampier here describes the bejuco, or rattan.
[23] The name Mindoro is by some writers derived from mina de oro, as it was supposed to be rich in gold. In the document showing that the Spaniards took formal possession of it (for reference to which see our VOL. III, p. 105, note 32), it is called Luzon le menor (“Luzón the less;” cf. p. 74).
“This island was formerly called Mainit, and the Spaniards gave it the name of Mindoro, on account of a village called Minolo, which lay between Puerto de Galeras and the harbor of Ylog.” (Concepción, Hist. de Philipinas, viii, p. 8.)
[24] From 1603 the English, as well as the Dutch, had a factory at Bantam for the purchase of pepper, which they maintained for eighty years. In 1683 the Dutch sent a considerable force from Batavia and expelled the English from Bantam; the latter, after being baffled at Achin, made a settlement at Bencoolen (1685), where they built Fort York. This site proved insalubrious, and in 1714 its successor, Fort Marlborough, was erected, away from the river. In 1824, Bencoolen and the factories dependent on it were given over to the Dutch, in exchange for Malacca and some factories in India. (Crawfurd’s Dict. Ind. Islands, p. 48). Sellebar was a village not far east from Bencoolen.