He Is Always Attended By A Sergeant And Six Men Armed
With Match-Locks; Besides Three Others, One Of Whom Wears A Head-Piece
And Carries A Large Drawn Scymitar, Another Has A Shield, And A Third A
Large Fan.
Four slaves sit at his feet, one holding his betel box,
another a lighted match, the third his box of tobacco for smoking, and
the fourth a spitting bason.
The petty kings and other great men sit on
his left hand and before him, every one attended by a slave, and they
chew betel or tobacco in his presence, sitting cross-legged, and when
they speak to him they lift their hands joined to their foreheads.
The town of Bouton is very populous, and beside it runs a fine river,
said to come from ten miles up the country. The tide ebbs and flows a
considerable way up this river, which has a bar at its mouth, so that
boats cannot go in or come out at low water. At least 1500 boats belong
to this river, fifty of which are war proas, armed with pattereroes, and
carrying forty or fifty men each. Fifty islands are said to be tributary
to this king, who sends his proas once a year to gather their stated
tribute, which consists in slaves, every island giving him ten
inhabitants out of every hundred. There is one mosque, in Boutan, which
is supplied with priests from Mocha, the people being Mahometans. They
are great admirers of music, their houses are built on posts, and their
current money is Dutch coins and Spanish dollars. On the 7th our pinnace
returned with Mr Vanburgh and all our people, having parted from his
majesty on friendly terms, but could not procure a pilot. We resolved,
however, not to stay any longer, but to trust to Providence for our
future preservation: wherefore we began to unmoor our ships, and
dismissed our Portuguese linguist.
Next day, the 8th June, we made three islands to the north of
Salayer. On the 10th our pinnace came up with a small vessel, the
people on board of which said they were bound for the Dutch factory of
Macasser on the S.W. coast of Celebes. The pinnace brought away the
master of this vessel, who engaged to pilot us through the Straits of
Salayer and all the way to Batavia, if we would keep it secret from the
Dutch, and he sent his vessel to lie in the narrowest part of the
passage between the islands, till such time as our ships came up. On the
14th we passed the island of Madura, and on the 17th we made the high
land of Cheribon, which bore S.W. from us. This morning we saw a great
ship right ahead, to which I sent our pinnace for news. She was a ship
of Batavia of 600 tons and fifty guns, plying to some of the Dutch
factories for timber. Her people told us that we were still thirty Dutch
leagues from Batavia, but there was no danger by the way, and they even
supplied us with a large chart, which proved of great use to us. Towards
noon we made the land, which was very low, but had regular soundings, by
which we knew how to sail in the night by means of the lead; in the
afternoon we saw the ships in the road of Batavia, being between thirty
and forty sail great and small; and at six in the evening we came to
anchor, in between six and seven fathoms, in the long-desired port of
Batavia, in lat 6 deg. 10' S. and long. 252 deg. 51' W. from London.[231] We had
here to alter our account of time, having lost almost a day in going
round the world so far in a western course.
[Footnote 231: The latitude in the text is sufficiently accurate, but
the longitude is about a degree short. It ought to have been 253 deg. 54' W.
from Greenwich - E.]
After coming in sight of Batavia, and more especially after some sloops
or small vessels had been aboard of us, I found that I was quite a
stranger to the dispositions and humours of our people, though I had
sailed so long with them. A few days before they were perpetually
quarrelling, and a disputed lump of sugar was quite sufficient to have
occasioned a dispute. But now, there was-nothing but hugging and shaking
of hands, blessing their good stars, and questioning if such a paradise
existed on earth; and all because they had arrack for eight-pence a
gallon, and sugar for a penny a pound. Yet next minute they were all by
the ears, disputing about who should put the ingredients together; for
the weather was so hot, and the ingredients so excessively cheap, that
a little labour was now a matter of great importance among them.
Soon after our arrival at Batavia we proceeded to refit our ships,
beginning with the Marquis; but on coming down to her bends, we found
both these and the stern and stern-port so rotten and worm-eaten, that
on a survey of carpenters she was found incapable of being rendered fit
for proceeding round the Cape of Good Hope, on which we had to hire a
vessel to take in her loading. We then applied ourselves to refit the
other ships, which we did at the island of Horn, not being allowed to do
so at Onrust, where the Dutch clean and careen all their ships. We
hove down the Duke and Duchess and Bachelor, the sheathing of which
ships were very much worm-eaten in several places. In heaving down, the
Duchess sprung her fore-mast, which we replaced by a new one. When the
ships were refitted, we returned to Batavia road, where we rigged three
of them, and sold the Marquis, after taking out all her goods and
stores, and distributing her officers and men into the others.
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