Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/187

 LUIS VAKZ DK TORRES. 39

From hence I stood back to the N.W. to 111° S. latitude : there we fell in with the beginning of New Guinea, the coast of which runs W. by N. and E. by S. I coukl not weather the east point, so I coasted along to the westward on the south side.

All this land of New Guinea is peopled with Indians, not very white, and naked, except their waists, which are covered with a cloth made of the bark of trees, and much painted. They fight with darts, targets, and some stone clubs, w^hich are made fine with plumage. Along the coast are many islands and habitations. All the coast has many ports, very large, with very large rivers, and many plains. Without these islands there runs a reef of shoals, and be- tween them [the shoals] and the main land are the islands. There is a channel within. In these ports I took possession for Your Majesty.

We went along three hundred leagues of coast, as I have mentioned, and diminished the latitude 2i°, which brought us into 9°. From hence we fell in with a bank of from three to nine fathoms, which extends along the coast above 180 leagues. We went over it along the coast to 7j° S. lati- tude, and the end of it is in 5°. We could not go farther on for the many shoals and great currents, so we were obliged to sail out S.W. in that depth to 11° S. latitude. There is all over it an archipelago of islands without number, by which we passed, and at the end of the eleventh degree the bank became shoaler. Here were very large islands, and there appeared more to the southward : they were inhabited by black people, very corpulent, and naked : their arms were lances, arrows, and clubs of stone ill-fashioned. We could not get any of their arms. We caught in all this land twenty persons of difijerent nations, that with them we might be able to give a better account to Your Majesty. They give much notice of other people, although as yet they do not make themselves well understood.