232 A VOYAGE TO [North Coast. 
/ 
iro 3. wounded since their arrival in this road: they cautioned us much to 
Saturday 'id. beware of the natives.* 
They had no knowledge of any European settlement in this 
country ; and on learning the name Port Jackson, the son of Pobas- 
soo made a memorandum of it as thus, ^"| wr * t ' n £ 
from left to right. Until this time, that some nutmegs were shown 
to them, they did not know of their being produced here ; nor had 
they ever met with cocoa nuts, bananas, or other edible fruits or 
vegetables; fish, and sometimes turtle, being all they procured. I 
inquired if they knew of any rivers or openings leading far inland, 
if they made charts of what they saw, or used any charts ? To 
all which Pobassoo answered in the negative. There was a river at 
Timor, into which the ship could go ; and he informed me of two 
turtle islands, one of them not far to the north-west of our situa- 
tion in the road ; the other would be seen from the mast head as 
we sailed along the shore. t 
I could find no other nautical instrument amongst them than a 
very small pocket compass, apparently of Dutch manufacture; by this 
their course is directed at sea, without the aid of any chart or astro- 
nomical observation. They carry a month’s water, in joints of bam- 
boo ; and their food is rice, cocoa nuts, and dried fish, with a few 
fowls for the chiefs. The black gummotoo rope, of which we had 
found pieces at Sir Edward Pellew’s Group, was in use on board 
the prows; and they said it was made from the same palm whence 
the sweet sirup, called gulah, is obtained. 
My numberless questions were answered patiently, and with 
apparent sincerity ; Pobassoo even stopped one day longer at my de- 
sire, than he had intended, for the north-west monsoon, he said, 
* A question suggests itself here : Could the natives of the west side of the Gulpli of 
Carpentaria have learned the rite of circumcision from these Malay Mahometans ? troni 
the short period that the latter had frequented the coast, and the nature of the inter- 
course between the two people, it seems to me very little probable. 
