The boat was now sent to the other island to see for a more convenient place in which to anchor; but she was presently beset by a vast number of canoes filled with a mad sort of people, armed with clubs, who boarded the boat and attacked the Dutchmen.  On firing their muskets, the savages laughed at them for making so much noise and doing so little hurt; but, on the next discharge, one of them being shot through the breast, they learnt to pay more respect to the muskets, and to keep their due distance for the future.  The savages were lusty, well-proportioned men, and most expert swimmers, but naked and thievish, and very fantastical in the fashion of their hair, some having it short, others long, some curled, and others plaited or folded up in various forms.

On the 12th the savages came again in their canoes, laden with cocoas, bananas, ubes-roots, hogs, and fresh water, contending violently who should get first on board.  Those who were behind, being unable to get over the throng of canoes and men before them, leapt into the sea, and diving under the canoes, swam to the ship with bunches of cocoas in their mouths, and climbed up the side like so many rats, and in such swarms that the Dutch had to keep them off with cudgels.  The Dutch bartered with them that day for so many cocoas, as to produce twelve for each of their men, being eighty-five in number.  The natives wondered much at the size and strength of the Dutch ship; and some of them even dived under her bottom, knocking it with stones, as if to try how strong it was.  The king of these savages sent a black hog on board as a present, charging the messenger to take no reward.  Shortly after he came in person, in a large ship of their fashion, attended by thirty-five single canoes; and when at a small distance from the ship, he and all his people began to bawl out as loud as they could, being their manner of welcoming strangers.  The Dutch received him with drums and trumpets, which pleased him much; and he and his attendants shewed their sense of this honourable reception by bowing and clapping their hands.  The king gave them a present after his fashion, which they requited with an old hatchet, some rusty nails and glass beads, and a piece of linen, with all which he seemed much pleased.  This king was not distinguished from his subjects by any external mark of dignity, but merely by the reverence they shewed him, as he was equally naked with all the rest; but he could not be prevailed on to come on board the Unity.

At noon on the 13th, the Dutch ship was surrounded by twenty-three large double canoes, or ships of their fashion, and forty-five single canoes, in all of which there could not be less than seven or eight hundred men.  At first they pretended to come for the purpose of trade, making signs of friendship, and endeavouring to prevail upon the Dutch to remove their ship to the other island, where they would be better accommodated.  Yet, in spite of all these fair