A part of the ship’s company was permitted to go on shore so soon as our work was completed; and two men, my Malay cook and a youth from Port Jackson, being absent in the evening, the town was searched for them, but in vain.  We got under way early next morning [FRIDAY 8 APRIL 1803], before the sea breeze set in, and stood off and on until lieutenant Fowler again went after the men.  On his return without success, we stretched out of the bay; but the wind being light, and the governor having promised to send off the men, if found before the ship was out of sight, I still entertained a hope of receiving my deserters.

Timor is well known to be one of the southernmost and largest of the Molucca Islands.  Its extent is more considerable than the charts usually represent it, being little less than 250 miles in a north-eastern direction, by from thirty to sixty in breadth.  The interior part is a chain of mountains, some of which nearly equal the peak of Teneriffe in elevation; whilst the shores on the south-east side are represented to be exceedingly low, and over-run with mangroves.  Gold is said to be contained in the mountains, and to be washed down the streams; but the natives are so jealous of Europeans gaining any knowledge of it, that at a former period, when forty men were sent by the Dutch to make search, they were cut off.  In the vicinity of Coepang, the upper stone is mostly calcareous; but the basis is very different, and appeared to me to be argillaceous.

The original inhabitants of Timor, who are black but whose hair is not woolly, inhabit the mountainous parts, to which they appear to have been driven by the Malays, who are mostly in possession of the sea coast.  There were formerly several Portuguese establishments on the north side of the island, of which Diely and Lefflow still remained; but these have all gradually declined, and the governor of Diely was now said to be the sole white Portuguese resident on the island.  The Dutch territory at Coepang did not extend beyond four or five miles round Fort Concordia; and the settlement affording no other advantage to the Company than that of keeping out other nations, it seemed to be following, with accelerated steps, the ruin of their affairs.  During the war which terminated in 1801, the communication with Batavia was interrupted, and the town taken by the English forces; an insurrection was raised by the half-cast people, and some of the troops left as a garrison were massacred, and the rest abandoned the island.  During these troubles the town had been set on fire; and at this time, all the best houses were in ruins.  The few troops kept by the Dutch were mostly Malays, some of the officers even, being mulattos; and the sole person amongst them, who had any claim to respectability, was a Swiss who had the command of Fort Concordia, but with no higher rank that that of serjeant-major.  Besides the governor and two or three soldiers, I saw only two European residents at Coepang; one was the surgeon of whom captain Bligh speaks so handsomely in his narrative, the other a young gentleman named Viertzen, who had lately arrived.