On this day ...
15 January 1771
Endeavour Voyage Maps
James Cook's Journal Ms 1, National Library of Australia
Transcript of Cook's Journal
Joseph Banks's Journal
Sydney Parkinson's Journal
Batavia to the Cape of Good Hope
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The first and second, and perhaps the third ship that comes in the season may be tolerably supplied with turtle; but those that come afterwards must be content with small ones. Those that we bought were of the green kind, and at an average cost us about a half-penny or three farthings a pound. We were much disappointed to find them neither fat nor well flavoured; and we imputed it to their having been long kept in crawls or pens of brackish water, without food. The fowls are large, and we bought a dozen of them for a Spanish dollar, which is about five pence a piece: the small deer cost us two pence a piece, and the larger, of which two only were brought down, a rupee. Many kinds of fish are to be had here, which the natives fell by hand, and we found them tolerably cheap. Cocoa-nuts we bought at the rate of a hundred for a dollar, if they were picked; and if they were taken promiscuously, one hundred and thirty. Plantains we found in great plenty; we procured also some pine apples, water melons, jaccas, and pumpkins; besides rice, the greater part of which was of the mountain kind, that grows in dry land; yams, and several other vegetables, at a very reasonable rate.
The inhabitants are Javanese, whose Raja is subject to the Sultan of Bantam. Their customs are very similar to those of the Indians about Batavia; but they seem to be more jealous of their women, for we never saw any of them during all the time that we were there, except one by chance in the woods, as she was running away to hide herself. They profess the Mahometan religion, but I believe there is not a mosque in the whole island: we were among them during the fast, which the Turks call Ramadan, which they seemed to keep with great rigour, for not one of them would touch a morsel of victuals, or even chew their betel till sun-set.
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Vols. II-III of the London 1773 edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, pages 772 - 773, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
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