THE iioutman's abroliios. 179
many other relics of more recent date, among which another doit, which was dated 1700, which we concluded marked the position of the loss of the Zecwijk in 1720. On this island we found a large number of small glass bottles, about the size and form of Dutch cheeses, very orderly arranged in rows on the ground ; a few very large glass bottles of similar form ; some large brass buckles, which had been gilded, and much of the gilt still existed. Numerous small clay pipes, which served to solace our crew with the help of tobacco, as doubtless they had done long ago for former owners. And one brass gun, of about three-pounds calibre, with an iron swivel, the iron, however, was diminished by corrosion to nearly nothing ; it had a movable chamber for loading it, which was fitted for a square hole, on the upper part of the gun near the breech. But what was most remarkable about it was that vermilion paint was still on the muzzle. The island on which this was found we called Gun Island, and the passage between Pelsart Group and the middle one was called Zeewyk Channel."
I have had the good fortune to find among the papers of the late East India Company, what was written by the govern- ment of Batavia about the loss of the ship Zeeivijk to the directors at home, together with a map made by the skipper Jan Steyns, while on these shoals.
" To the Directors of the Assemhly of the Seventeen, etc.
" On the 26th of April a letter^ unexpectedly came to hand by the patchialang De Veerman, from the late skipper and under-merchant of the Zeeland ship Zeewyk, Jan Steyns and Jan Nibbens, written from the Straits of Sunda, but without date, communicating the fact that this vessel, after leaving the Cape of Good Hope on the 21st of April, had been wrecked, on the 9th of June, on the reef lying before the islands Frederick Iioutman's Abrolhos, situated near ^ Appendix I and III.
A A
