This Bunch Of Feather Usually Lies Flat, In A Dent, Or Hollow, On The Crown Of The Head, Unless When The Bird Is Frightened, When It Is Erected, And Opens Like A Fan.

The flesh and legs of this bird are very black, and they smell very sweet.

When they fly up and down the woods, they cry crocadore, crocadore, or cockatoo, cockatoo, whence their name. The cassowary is as large as a Virginia turkey, having a head nearly the same with the turkey, with a long stiff bunch of hair on his breast, also like the turkey. His legs are almost as thick as a man's wrist, having five great claws on each foot. The back is high and round, both it and the pinions being covered with long hair instead of feathers. The female of this bird lays an egg so large that its shell will hold an English pint of fluid, having a thick shell, spotted with green and white, and exactly like China-ware. I never tasted the eggs of this bird, but its flesh is good eating, resembling that of a turkey, but stronger.

The birds of paradise are about the size of pigeons, and are never seen here alive, neither is it known whence they come. I have seen several of them at Amboina preserved in spice, in which state they are sent as rarities to several parts of the world. These birds are said to resort, in February and March, when the nutmegs are ripe, to Banda and Amboina, where they feed on the outer rind of the nutmeg, after which they fall to the ground, quite stupified, or as it were dead drunk, when innumerable ants gather about them, and eat them up. There are here many kinds of fish, but the most remarkable is the sea-porcupine, which is about three feet long, and two and a half feet round, having large eyes, two fins on the back, and a large fin on each side, near the gills. Its body is all beset with sharp spines, or quills, like a porcupine, whence its name is derived.

All round Amboina the bottom is sand, but the water is so deep that there is no anchorage near its shores, except to leeward, or on the west side, where a ship may anchor in forty fathoms, close to the shore in the harbour. This harbour runs so deep into the island as almost to divide it into two, which are joined by so narrow a neck of land that the Malays often haul their canoes across. On the east side of the entry into the harbour there is a small fort of six guns, close to which the depth is twenty fathoms. About a league farther up is the usual anchorage for ships, close under the guns of the great castle, which has been called Victoria ever since the massacre of the English at this place. About two miles farther to the N.E. and within the harbour, is the place where the English factory formerly stood; and near it is the hole into which the English were said to have been thrown after the massacre.

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