A Voyage to New Holland eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 137 pages of information about A Voyage to New Holland.

A Voyage to New Holland eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 137 pages of information about A Voyage to New Holland.
put it out again.  As soon as the boat is brought nigh enough to the shore he who stands by the bulkhead takes instantly a turn with the hawser about the bulkhead stanchion; and that stops her fast before the sea can turn her aside:  and when the two men have got in their lading they haul off to sea till they come a little without the swell; where they remove the salt into another boat that carries it on board the ship.  Without such a frape-boat here is but bad landing at any time:  for though it is commonly very smooth in the road, yet there falls a great sea on the shore, so that every ship that comes here should have such a boat, and bring or make or borrow one of the other ships that happen to be here; for the inhabitants have none.  I have been thus particular in the description of these frape-boats because of the use they may be of in any places where a great sea falls in upon the shore:  as it does especially in many open roads in the East and West Indies; where they might therefore be very serviceable; but I never saw any of them there.

Its vegetables, silk-cotton, etcIts soil, and towns; its guinea-hens and other fowls, beasts, and fishOf the sea turtles, etcLaying in the wet seasonOf the natives, their trade and livelihood.

The island Mayo is generally barren, being dry, as I said; and the best of it is but a very indifferent soil.  The sandy bank that pens in the salt pond has a sort of silk-cotton growing upon it, and a plant that runs along upon the ground, branching out like a vine, but with thick broad leaves.  The silk-cotton grows on tender shrubs, 3 or 4 foot high, in cods as big as an apple, but of a long shape; which when ripe open at one end, parting leisurely into 4 quarters; and at the first opening the cotton breaks forth.  It may be of use for stuffing of pillows, or the like, but else is of no value, any more than that of the great cotton-tree.  I took of these cods before that were quite ripe, and laid them in my chest; and in 2 or 3 days they would open and throw out the cotton.  Others I have bound fast with strings, so that the cod could not open; and in a few days after, as soon as I slackened the string never so little, the cod would burst and the cotton fly out forcibly at a very little hole, just as the pulp out of a roasting apple, till all has been out of the cod.  I met with this sort of cotton afterwards at Timor (where it was ripe in November) and nowhere else in all my travels; but I found two other sorts of silk-cotton at Brazil, which I shall there describe.  The right cotton-shrub grows here also, but not on the sandbank.  I saw some bushes of it near the shore; but the most of it is planted in the middle of the isle, where the inhabitants

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A Voyage to New Holland from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.