the captain, by the Sultan's invitation, returned the
visit, accompanied by eight men, and Dampier went with them. The Sultan
received them in a neat house, near which forty naked soldiers with
muskets were drawn up. They were entertained with tobacco and betel-nut
and young cocoa-nuts.

While they were seated on their mats, the women and children thronged
near the windows to look at them. The next day the Sultan again came on
board, bringing a little slave boy as a present. The captain said he
was too young to be at sea, and the Sultan exchanged him for a bigger
boy. The men purchased a number of parrots and cockatoos, as white as
milk, with bunches of feathers on their heads. The captain also
purchased a canoe, which the carpenters altered by sawing off one end
and making it flat, when she rowed and sailed admirably.

From this place the _Cygnet_ steered across for New Holland, as the crew
wished to ascertain what that country would afford them. On the 4th of
January, 1688, they fell in with the land of New Holland, and then
coasted along some distance.

At that time it was not known whether it was an island or a continent,
but Dampier affirms that it joins neither to Asia, Africa, nor America.
The land was low and sandy, and destitute of water.

Dampier describes the inhabitants as the "miserablest people in the
world. The Hodmadods of Monomatapa (that is, the Hottentots of the
Cape), though nasty people, yet, for wealth, are gentlemen to these,
and, setting aside their human shape, they differ little from the
brutes."

After some trouble, the English induced some of these natives to
approach them, and gave them some old clothes, intending to make them
carry their casks of water to the boat; but all the signs they could
make would not induce the natives to touch the barrels; instead, they
stood, like statues, without motion, grinning as so many monkeys would
have done, and staring one upon another!

The seamen were therefore compelled to carry the water themselves, but
the natives very formally put the clothes off again, and laid them down,
as if they were only to work in. They did not appear, indeed, to have
any great fancy for them at first, neither did they look surprised at
anything they saw. On another occasion, when the boat approached the
shore, a number of them appeared, threatening the strangers with their
clubs and lances. At last the captain ordered a drum to be beaten. No
sooner did th