being somewhat troublesome to
carry to the canoes, we thought to have made these men to have carry'd
it for us, and therefore we gave them some clothes; to one an old pair
of breeches, to another a ragged shirt, to a third a jacket that was
scarce worth owning. We put them on, thinking that this finery would
have brought them to work heartily for us; and our water being filled
in small, long barrels, about six gallons in each, we brought these
our new servants to the wells and put a barrel on each of their shoulders.
But they stood like statues, without motion, but grinn'd like so many
monkeys staring one upon another. So we were forced to carry the water
ourselves."

They had soon had enough of the new country, weighed anchor, and steered
away to the north. Dampier returned to England even a poorer man than
he had left it twelve years before. After countless adventures and
hairbreadth escapes, after having sailed entirely round the world,
he brought back with him nothing but one unhappy black man, "Prince
Jeoly," whom he had bought for sixty dollars. He had hoped to recoup
himself by showing the poor native with his rings and bracelets and
painted skin, but he was in such need of money on landing that he gladly
sold the poor black man on his arrival in the Thames.

But Dampier had made himself a name as a successful traveller, and
in 1699 he was appointed by the King, William III., to command the
_Roebuck_, two hundred and ninety tons, with a crew of fifty men and
provisions for twenty months. Leaving England in the middle of January
1699, he sighted the west coast of New Holland toward the end of July,
and anchored in a bay they called Sharks Bay, not far from the rocks
where the _Batavia_ was wrecked with Captain Pelsart in 1629. He gives
us a graphic picture of this place, with its sweet-scented trees, its
shrubs gay as the rainbow with blossoms and berries, its many-coloured
vegetation, its fragrant air and delicious soil. The men caught sharks
and devoured them with relish, which speaks of scarce provisions.
Inside one of the sharks (eleven feet long) they found a hippopotamus.
"The flesh of it was divided among my men," says the Captain, "and
they took care that no waste should be made of it, but thought it,
as things stood, good entertainment."

As it had been with Pelsart, so now with Dampier, fresh water was the
difficulty, and they sailed north-east in search of it. They fell in
with a group of small rocky