- E.]

The Macassers are a brave, industrious, and faithful people, to such as deal fairly with them; and on this account are highly esteemed in the Eastern Indies, more especially by the Dutch.

They are, however, daring, cruel, and revengeful, if once provoked. Mr Katchpole had contracted with these men to serve for three years, at the end of which period, if they pleased, they were to receive their wages and to depart: But he, though they strictly performed their part of the agreement, broke faith with them, keeping them beyond their time against their will. In addition to this great breach in morality, he added as notorious an error in politics; for, after provoking these men so egregiously by refusing to fulfil his engagement, he still confided to them the guard of his own person and the custody of the factory. This gave them ample opportunity of revenging the ill usage they had met with, and with that ferocity which is so natural to untutored barbarians. They rose in mutiny one night, and murdered Mr Katchpole, and all who were at the time along with him in the factory. A few, who happened to lodge on the outside of the fort, hearing the cries of their friends within during the massacre, fled from their beds to the sea-shore; where, by a singular interposition of Providence, they found a bark completely ready for sea, in which they embarked half naked, and put immediately to sea, just in time to escape the rage of the Macassers, who came in search of them to the shore, precisely when they had weighed anchor and pushed off to sea.

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