254 
A VOYAGE TO 
\_At Timor 1 . 
1 ^ 803 , with the governor, the fort firing a salute on our landing ; and it is 
Thursdays but justice to Mr. Giesler and the orders under which he acted, to 
say, that he conducted himself throughout with that polite and re- 
spectful attention, which the representative of one friendly nation 
owes to that of another. 
A part of the ship’s company was permitted to go on shore so 
soon as our work was completed ; and two men, my Malay cook 
and a youth from Port Jackson, being absent in the evening, the 
town was searched for them, but in vain. We got under way early 
Friday 8. next morning, before the sea breeze set in, and stood off and on 
until lieutenant Fowler again went after the men. On his return 
without success, we stretched out of the bay ; but the wind being 
light, and the governor having promised to send off the men, if 
found before the ship was out of sight, I still entertained a hope of 
receiving my deserters. 
Timor is well known to be one of the southernmost and largest 
of the Molucca Islands. Its extent is more considerable than the 
charts usually represent it, being little less than 250 miles in a north- 
eastern direction, by from thirty to sixty in breadth. The interior 
part is a chain of mountains, some of which nearly equal the peak 
of Teneriffe in elevation; whilst the shores on the south-east side 
are represented to be exceedingly low, and over-run with mangroves. 
Gold is said to be contained in the mountains, and to be washed 
down the streams; but the natives are so jealous of Europeans gain- 
ing any knowledge of it, that at a former period, when forty men 
were sent by the Dutch to make search, they were cut off. In the 
vicinity of Coepang, the upper stone is mostly calcareous; but the 
basis is very different, and appeared to me to be argillaceous. 
The original inhabitants of Timor, who are black but whose 
hair is not woolly, inhabit the mountainous parts, to which they ap- 
pear to have been driven by the Malays, who are mostly in posses- 
sion of the sea coast. There were formerly several Portuguese 
establishments on the north side of the island, of which Diely and 
