328 



THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



Unpleasant 

 savages. 



" Almost 

 weary." 



and a poor scrub of woodland. Standing in the savannahs 

 were " several things like haycocks." They looked like 

 Hottentot's houses, but were found to be " so many rocks." 

 If Dampier had looked more closely he would probably 

 have found that they were so many ant-hills. Two or 

 three dingoes were seen " like hungry wolves, lean like 

 so many skeletons, being nothing but skin and bones." 



There was a ' ' rencounter ' ' with the natives, who were even 

 worse to look at than the dingoes. They refused friend- 

 ship and ran away. Dampier with two men chased them, 

 hoping to learn whence they got water. A nimble young 

 man overtook them, but they attacked him with wooden 

 lances, and Dampier had to shoot one of them. Their 

 chief was " a young brisk man painted with a circle of 

 white paste about his eyes, and a white streak down his 

 nose ; . . . his painting adding very much to his natural 

 deformity ; for they all of them have the most unpleasant 

 looks and the worst features of any people that ever I 

 saw, though I have seen great variety of savages." Appar- 

 ently they were even worse than " the miserablest people 

 in the world " whom, in the previous voyage, he had seen 

 forty or fifty leagues to the North-East. " These were 

 much the same blinking creatures (here beingalso abundance 

 of the same flesh-flies teasing them), and with the same 

 black skins, and hair frizzled, tall and thin, as those were." 

 Like them also they seemed to live chiefly on shell-fish 

 and small fry, caught in holes in the sand at low water. 



Dampier had now " spent about five weeks in ranging 

 off and on the coast of New Holland, a length of about 

 three hundred leagues." He had landed at three several 

 places to see what there might be thereabouts worth 

 discovery, and especially to recruit his stock of fresh 

 water and provisions. He had found nothing worth dis- 

 covering, nothing to eat, nothing to drink. He now thought 

 to -sail to the place where the Cygnet had anchored, that 

 happy place where you could get water by sufficient 

 Digging. But everlasting " shoals " made it " a very 

 tedious thing to sail along the shore." He " edged further 

 off to sea," lost sight of land, and got North of the place 



