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Our people, in rummaging some of the huts, found the carved head of a rudder, which had manifestly belonged to a Dutch longboat, and was very old and worm-eaten. They found also a piece of hammered-iron, a piece of brass, and some small iron tools, which the ancestors of the present inhabitants of this place probably obtained from the Dutch ship to which the longboat had belonged, all which I brought away with me. Whether these people found means to cut off the ship, or whether she was lost upon the island or after she left it, cannot be known; but there is reason to believe that she never returned to Europe, because no account of her voyage, or of any discoveries that she made, is extant. If the ship sailed from this place in safety, it is not perhaps easy to account for her leaving the rudder of her longboat behind her; and if she was cut off by the natives, there must be much more considerable remains of her in the island, especially of her iron-work, upon which all Indian nations, who have no metal, set the highest value; we had no opportunities however to examine this matter farther. The hammered-iron, brass, and iron tools, I brought away with me; but we found a tool exactly in the form of a carpenter’s adze, the blade of which was a pearl oyster-shell; possibly this might have been made in imitation of an adze which had belonged to the carpenter of the Dutch Ship, for among the tools that I brought away there was one which seemed to be the remains of such an implement, though it was worn away almost to nothing.
Close to the houses of these people, we saw buildings of another kind, which appeared to be burying-places, and from which we judged that they had great veneration for their dead. They were situated under lofty trees, that gave a thick shade; the sides and tops were of stone; and in their
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page 102, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv01/138.html