h I sent our pinnace for news. She was a ship
of Batavia of 600 tons and fifty guns, plying to some of the Dutch
factories for timber. Her people told us that we were still thirty Dutch
leagues from Batavia, but there was no danger by the way, and they even
supplied us with a large chart, which proved of great use to us. Towards
noon we made the land, which was very low, but had regular soundings, by
which we knew how to sail in the night by means of the lead; in the
afternoon we saw the ships in the road of Batavia, being between thirty
and forty sail great and small; and at six in the evening we came to
anchor, in between six and seven fathoms, in the long-desired port of
Batavia, in lat 6 deg. 10' S. and long. 252 deg. 51' W. from London.[231] We had
here to alter our account of time, having lost almost a day in going
round the world so far in a western course.

[Footnote 231: The latitude in the text is sufficiently accurate, but
the longitude is about a degree short. It ought to have been 253 deg. 54' W.
from Greenwich--E.]

After coming in sight of Batavia, and more especially after some sloops
or small vessels had been aboard of us, I found that I was quite a
stranger to the dispositions and humours of our people, though I had
sailed so long with them. A few days before they were perpetually
quarrelling, and a disputed lump of sugar was quite sufficient to have
occasioned a dispute. But now, there was-nothing but hugging and shaking
of hands, blessing their good stars, and questioning if such a paradise
existed on earth; and all because they had arrack for eight-pence a
gallon, and sugar for a penny a pound. Yet next minute they were all by
the ears, disputing about who should put the ingredients together; for
the weather was so hot, and the ingredients so excessively cheap, that
a little labour was now a matter of great importance among them.

Soon after our arrival at Batavia we proceeded to refit our ships,
beginning with the Marquis; but on coming down to her bends, we found
both these and the stern and stern-port so rotten and worm-eaten, that
on a survey of carpenters she was found incapable of being rendered fit
for proceeding round the Cape of Good Hope, on which we had to hire a
vessel to take in her loading. We then applied ourselves to refit the
other ships, which we did at the island of Horn, not being allowed to do
so at _Onrust_, where the Dutch clean and careen all their ships. We
hove down the D