for the sake of the Nutts; a thing that I think no man living could
have justified, for as the Natives had attacked us for meer landing
without taking away one thing, certainly they would have made a Vigerous
effort to have defended their property; in which case many of them must
have been kill'd, and perhaps some of our own people too, and all this
for 2 or 300 Green Cocoa Nutts, which, when we had got them, would have
done us little service; besides nothing but the utmost necessity would
have obliged me to have taken this method to come at refreshments.

It's true I might have gone farther along the Coast to the Northward and
Westward until we had found a place where the Ship could lay so near the
Shore as to cover the people with her Guns when landed; but it is very
probable that before we had found such a place we should have been
carried so far to the West as to have been obliged to have gone to
Batavia by the way of the Moluccas, and on the North side of Java, where
we were all utter Strangers. This I did not think was so safe a Passage
as to go to the South of Java and thro' the Straits of Sunda, the way I
propose to myself to go. Besides, as the Ship is leakey, we are not yet
sure wether or no we shall not be obliged to heave her down at Batavia;
in this case it becomes the more necessary that we should make the best
of our way to that place, especially as no new discovery can be Expected
to be made in these Seas, which the Dutch have, I believe, long ago
narrowly examin'd, as appears from 3 Maps bound up with the French
History of Voyages to the Terra Australis, published in 1756,* (* De
Brye's Voyages.) which Maps, I do suppose, by some means have been got
from the Dutch, as we found the Names of many of the places are in that
Language.

It should likewise seem from the same Maps that the Spaniards and Dutch
have at one time or another circumnavigated the whole of the Island of
New Guinea, as the most of the Names are in these 2 Languages; and such
part of the Coast as we were upon I found the Chart tolerable good, which
obliges me to give some Credit to all the rest, notwithstanding we
neither know by whom or when they were taken, and I always understood,
before I had a sight of these Maps, that it was unknown whether or no New
Holland and New Guinea was not one continued land, and so it is said in
the very History of Voyages these Maps are bound up in. However, we have
now put this wholy out of dispute; but,