cruise under Captain Swan, bound for the East Indies.

On 1st March 1686, Swan and Dampier sailed away from the coast of Mexico
on the voyage that led to Dampier's circumnavigation of the globe.
For fifty days they sailed without sighting land, and when at last
they found themselves off the island of Guam, they had only three days'
food left, and the crews were busy plotting to kill Captain Swan and
eat him, the other commanders sharing the same fate in turn.

"Ah, Dampier," said Captain Swan, when he and all the men had refreshed
themselves with food, "you would have made but a poor meal," for Dampier
was as lean as the Captain was "fat and fleshy." Soon, however, fresh
trouble arose among the men. Captain Swan lost his life, and Dampier
on board the little _Cygnet_ sailed hurriedly for the Spice Islands.

[Illustration: DAMPIER'S SHIP THE _CYGNET_. From a drawing in the
Dutch edition of his _Voyage Round the World_, 1698.]

He was now on the Australian parallels, "in the shadow of a world lying
dark upon the face of the ocean." It was January 1688 when Dampier
sighted the coast of New Holland and anchored in a bay, which they
named Cygnet Bay after their ship, somewhere off the northern coast
of eastern Australia. Here, while the ship was undergoing repairs,
Dampier makes his observations.

"New Holland," he tells us, "is a very large tract of land. It is not
yet determined whether it is an island or a main continent, but I am
certain that it joins neither to Africa, Asia, or America."

"The inhabitants of this country," he tells us, "are the miserablest
people in the world. They have no houses, but lie in the open air without
any covering, the earth being their bed and the heaven their canopy.
Their food is a small sort of fish, which they catch at low tide, while
the old people that are not able to stir abroad by reason of their
age and the tender infants wait their return, and what Providence has
bestowed on them they presently broil on the coals and eat it in common.
They are tall and thin, and of a very unpleasing aspect; their hair
is black, short, and curled, like that of the negroes of Guinea."

This Englishman's first description of the Australian natives cannot
fail to be interesting. "After we had been here a little while, we
clothed some of the men, designing to have some service from them for
it; for we found some wells of water here, and intended to carry two
or three barrels of it aboard. But it