They all speak the Malay language, though they have a language of their own, different both from the Malay and the Javanese.  Their own language they call Catta Gunung, the language of the mountains; and they say that it is spoken upon the mountains of Java, whence their tribe originally migrated, first to Mew Bay, and then to their present station, being driven from their first settlement by tygers, which they found too numerous to subdue.

We now made the best of our way for the Cape of Good Hope, but the seeds of disease which we had received at Batavia began to appear with the most threatening symptoms in dysenteries and slow fevers.  Lest the water which we had taken in at Prince’s Island should have any share in our sickness, we purified it with lime, and we washed all parts of the ship between decks with vinegar, as a remedy against infection.  Mr Banks was among the sick, and for some time there was no hope of his life.  We were very soon in a most deplorable situation; the ship was nothing better than an hospital, in which those that were able to go about were too few to attend the sick, who were confined to their hammocks; and we had almost every night a dead body to commit to the sea.  In the course of about six weeks, we buried Mr Sporing, a gentleman who was in Mr Banks’s retinue, Mr Parkinson, his natural history painter, Mr Green, the astronomer, the boatswain, the carpenter and his mate, Mr Monkhouse, the midshipman, who had fothered the ship after she had been stranded on the coast of New Holland, our old jolly sail-maker and his assistant, the ship’s cook, the corporal of the marines, two of the carpenter’s crew, a midshipman, and nine seamen; in all three-and-twenty persons, besides the seven that we buried at Batavia.[165] On Friday the 15th of March, about ten o’clock in the morning, we anchored off the Cape of Good Hope, in seven fathom, with an oozy bottom.  The west point of the bay, called the Lion’s Tail, bore W.N.W., and the castle S.W., distant about a mile and a half.  I immediately waited upon the governor, who told me that I should have every thing the country afforded.  My first care was to provide a proper place ashore for the sick, which were not a few; and a house was soon found, where it was agreed they should be lodged and boarded at the rate of two shillings a-head per day.

[Footnote 165:  In the Biog.  Brit. where a summary of Cook’s Voyages is given, an observation is made on this melancholy part of the narrative, which the reader may not be displeased to see copied here.  “It is probable that these calamitous events, which could not fail of making a powerful impression on the mind of Lieutenant Cook, might give occasion to his turning his thoughts more zealously to those methods of preserving the health of seamen, which he afterwards pursued with such remarkable success.”  These methods will be amply detailed hereafter.—­E.]