Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/422

364 that any of our officers would write down the name of the ship, commander's name, where we came from, and where bound, with any particulars we chose relating to ourselves, for the information of any of our friends who might come after us, as we saw that some ships, especially Portuguese, had done. This book, he told us, was kept merely for the information of those who might come through these straits. In the other, which was a fair book, he entered the names of the ships and commanders, which only were sent to the Governor and Council of the Indies. On our writing down Europe as the place we had come from, he said: "Very well, anything you please, but this is merely for the information of your friends." In the proa were some small turtle, many fowls and ducks, also parrots, parroquets, rice-birds and monkeys, some few of which we bought, paying a dollar for a small turtle, and the same, at first for ten, afterwards for fifteen large fowls, two monkeys, or a whole cage of paddy-birds.

4th. Calm with light breezes, not sufficient to stem the current, which was very strong. To make our situation as tantalising as possible, innumerable proas were sailing about us in all directions. A boat was sent ashore for grass, and landed at an Indian town, where by hard bargaining some cocoanuts were bought at about three halfpence apiece, and rice in the straw at about five farthings a gallon. Neither here, nor in any other place where we have had connections with them, would they take any money but Spanish dollars. Large quantities of that floating substance which I have mentioned before under the name of sea-sawdust, had been seen ever since we came into the straits, and particularly to-day. Among it were many leaves, fruits, old stalks of plantain trees, plants of Pistia stratiotes, and such like trash, from whence we almost concluded that it came out of some river.

5th. Early in the morning a proa came on board, bringing a Dutchman, who said that his post was much like that of the man who was on board on the 3rd. He presented a printed paper, of which he had copies in