Streight of Magellan to the Islands of Disappointment
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from the power which fancy is perpetually exerting to aggravate the calamities of life. When I knew the soundings, I could not forbear standing close round the island with the ship, though I also knew it was impossible to procure any of the refreshments which it produced. The natives ran along the shore abreast of the ship, shouting and dancing; they also frequently brandished their long spears, and then threw themselves backward, and lay a few minutes motionless, as if they had been dead: this we understood as a menace that they would kill us, if we ventured to go on shore. As we were sailing along the coast, we took notice that in one place the natives had fixed upright in the sand two spears, to the top of which they had fastened several things that fluttered in the air, and that some of them were every moment kneeling down before them, as we supposed, invoking the assistance of some invisible Being to defend them against us. While I was thus circumnavigating the island with the ship, I sent the boats out again to sound, and when they came near the shore, the Indians set up one of the most hideous yells I had ever heard, pointing at the same time to their spears, and poising in their hands large stones which they took up from the beach. Our men on the contrary made all the signs of amity and good-will that they could devise, and at the same time threw them bread and many other things, none of which they vouchsafed so much as to touch, but with great expedition hauled five or six large canoes, which we saw lying upon the beach, up into the wood. When this was done, they waded into the water, and seemed to watch for an opportunity of laying hold of the boat, that they might drag her on shore: the people on board her, apprehending that this was their design, and that if they got them on shore they would certainly put them to death, were very impatient to be before-hand with them,
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page 94, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv01/130.html