Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
I take this to be one of the most unhealthy places in the world,
at least at this season. The airs are extremely violent and the sun so
scorching that it is difficult breathing . . . I have been upon the coast of
Guinea [the West African coast, known with good reason as 'the white
man's graveyard'] and West Indies and even the island of St Thomas's
under the line [Sao Tomé, an island on the equator off the coast of
Gabon]. I don't remember to have felt it anything near as hot as it is
here.
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Yet, for all these complaints, the nine-week stay on Tinian
proved highly beneficial. The sick, lodged ashore under canvas, re-
vived quickly on a diet of fresh meat, coconuts, limes, sour oranges,
guavas, bread fruit and paw-paw; And, before leaving, Byron was
able to lay aboard a store of coconuts and fruit and also some wild
boars some of the men had snared.
Like so many others who had reached this point half a world
away from home, Byron and his men could only think now of com-
pleting the voyage. The work which the commodore had been set or
had set himself was behind him. He had done all he could at the Falk-
lands. He had not found his islands of gold. He had crossed the Pa-
cific with the loss of only two men. He had recorded all there was
to record for the benefit of mariners who would follow after. It was
enough. He was not an explorer at heart. The empty spaces on his
charts did not lure him as they would lure Carteret and Cook. The
Admiralty might send men to the Pacific but it could not make them
explore. From the Marianas Byron made a north-westerly course
around the Philippines and thence by way of the coast of Sumatra
to Batavia. Here he received what must have seemed like a welcome
back to civilisation; a thirteen gun salute from an East-Indiaman
anchored in the roads.
Batavia was the Dutch mercantile capital in the Orient, a place
where Europeans of all nationalities mingled with Malays and
