Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/326

 170 EXPEDITION OF THREE DUTCH SHIPS

and feed on fi^sh, which they catch with harpoons of wood, and also by means of nets, putting out to sea in small canoes, made of the bark of trees, which are in themselves so fragile, that it is necessary to strengthen them with cross-beams.

Some of them had marks on their body, apparently cut or carved, which, as it seemed to our people, were looked upon by them as a kind of ornament. They eat sparingly and moderately, whereby they grow up always active and nimble ; their diet seems to consist of fish, and a few roots and vege- tables, but no birds or wild animals of any kind are used as food, for though animal food exists, and was found by our men in abundance, the natives appeared to be indiiferent to it.

According to the notes of the captain of the sloop Waijer, from the 14th of June, about five hundred people with women and children, were met on one occasion about two miles inland ; at night also they were descried sitting round several fires among the bushes ; nothing however was seen in their possession of any value. Our men might also easily have taken and brought over to Batavia with them, two or three of the natives who daily came on board, but the skip- per of the Vossenhosch, following out his instructions to the letter, would not allow them to be taken without their full consent, either by falsehood or fraud, and as no one under- stood their language, nothing was to be done in the matter ; consequently they remained in their own country.

The country here is for the most part level, and no moun- tains are to be seen, except a remarkable eminence, which at a distance has the appearance of three mountains, as noted in the journal of the skipper, under date ]May the 25th. The soil seems productive, if cultivated, but the whole extent of the coast is bordered by sands or downs. In no part were any remarkable trees noticed, much less any of an aromatic and s\)\ce kind.

The second bay after the Rooseboom's Bay just described, between Tigers and Wolfs-point, visited by our country-