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.
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