Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
graphers have accurate Pacific charts to study. But what these four
English voyages did was to indicate the general pattern of that scat-
tering of islands which lies across the Tropics between New Guinea
and Easter Island like ink spots flicked from a pen onto blotting pa-
per, thickly clustered in the West and thinning towards the East.
Carteret, still following Dampier's narrative, decided to make
for Mindanao in the southern Philippines, where the buccaneer-ex-
plorer had found the local people so hospitable. But almost a cen-
tury had passed since Dampier's visit and the indigenes had learned
during that time to be wary of Europeans, most of whom seemed to
be bent only on conquest. Thus, when Carteret sent a cutter ashore
for water the islanders, 'at the sight of our boat . . . fired two great
guns and sent three boats who chased ours till they got sight of the
ship'. And later, 'about 9 o'clock at night we were suddenly surprised
with the hollowing of a number of men onshore abreast of the ship,
intended as I imagine to have frightened us. It was exactly like the
Indian war cry, which is a sudden, hideous hollow they all give the
trated again, Carteret gave Mindanao a wide berth.
He now became the first circumnavigator to take the channel
between Sulawesi and Borneo
en route
for Batavia. It was the
shortest course and, with forty of his men totally incapacitated, he
had no alternative. On 15 December 1767 and 246 days after leaving
the Straits of Magellan this unfortunate captain dropped anchor off
the Dutch port of Maccasar (modern Udung Panjang) on the south-
west coast of Sulawesi. The long sequence of encounters with de-
ceptive havens and hostile natives was past. Now his ship and his
men could be rested for five months until the easterly monsoon
began in May. Or so Carteret may reasonably have hoped. But he was
doomed to drain to the dregs the cup of disappointment.
His letter to the governor, requesting permission to stay re-
ceived an abrupt answer:
