1803.
February.
Saturday 19.
wounded since their arrival in this road: they cautioned us much to beware of the natives.[1]
They, had no knowledge of any European settlement in this country; and on learning the name Port Jackson, the son of Pobassoo made a memorandum of it as thus, 
, writing 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 situation in the road; the other would be seen from the mast head as we sailed along the shore.
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 astronomical observation. They carry a month's water, in joints of bamboo; 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 gulak, is obtained.
My numberless questions were answered patiently, and with apparent sincerity; Pobassoo even stopped one day longer at my desire, 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 Gulph of Carpentaria have learned the rite of circumcision from these Malay Mahometans? From the short period that the latter had frequented the coast, and the nature of the intercourse between the two people, it seems to me very little probable.
