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New Guinea (continued)
company^ this however ^it was contrary to the inclination and opinion of some of the officers who would have had me send a party of men a shore to cut down the Cocoa-nutt Trees for the sake of the Nutts a thing that I think no man leiving could have justified, for as the Natives had attack'd us for meer land^ing without takeing away any one thing, certainly they would have made a vigorous effort to have defended their property in which case many of them must have been kill'd and perhaps some of our own people too and all this for 2 o[r] 300 green Cocoa-nutts which when we had got them would have done us little service ^besides nothing but the u[t]most necessity would have oblige'd me to have taken this Method to come at refreshments — its true I might have proceeded farther a long the Coast to the northward and westward untill we had found a place where the Ship could lay so near the shore as to cover the people with her guns when landed but it is very probable that before we had found such a place - we should have been carried so far to the West as to have been obliged to have gone to Batavi by the way of the Moluccas ^and on the North side of Java where we were all utter strangers this I did not think was so Safe a Passage —— as to go to the South of Java and
© Transcribed from National Library of Australia Manuscript 1 page 308, 2004
Published by South Seas
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/cook_remarks-097
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