The Sabander Commended Us
Mightily, For Shewing Our Reverence To Our Sovereign At So Great A
Distance From Our Country.
Some of the others asked, how it happened
that the Englishmen at the other house or factory did not
Do so
likewise; on which we told them that they were not English but
Hollanders, having no king, and their land being ruled only by
governors, being of a country near England, but speaking quite a
different language.
The multitude greatly admired to see so few of us discharge so many
shots, for the Javans and Chinese are very inexpert in the use of
fire-arms. In the afternoon, I made our people walk out into the town
and market-place, that the people might see their scarfs and hat-bands,
making a shew that the like had never been seen there before, and that
the natives might for the future know them from the Hollanders; and many
times the children ran after us in the streets, crying out, Orang
Engrees bayk, Orang Hollanda jahad: The Englishmen are good, the
Hollanders are bad.
The 6th December two Dutch ships came in, that had taken a rich
Portuguese carak near Macao, by which they got great plunder, and were
enabled so to bribe the regent, that he began to listen to their desire
of being permitted to build a handsome house. About this time the regent
sent for me to lend him 2000 pieces of eight, or at least 1000; but I
put him off with excuses, saying we had been left there with goods, not
money, that the natives owed us much which we could not get in, and that
we were under the necessity of purchasing pepper to load our ships,
which we were expecting to arrive daily.
The 6th February, 1604, Robert Wallis, one of our company, died, and
several others of our men were very weak and lame, owing to the heat of
the pepper, in dressing, screening, and turning it; so that we were in
future obliged to hire Chinese to do that work, our own men only
superintending them. The 16th of that month there came in a great ship
of Zealand from Patane, which made us believe that General Warwicke was
coming to load all his ships here; for which reason we immediately
bought up all the good and merchantable pepper we could get. This ship
had made some valuable prizes, but they had sworn all the English
mariners on board to tell us nothing, on pain of losing their wages,
which we took as very unkind. There was at this time in Bantam three
houses of the Hollanders, all upon separate accounts, which all bought
up as much pepper as they could get.
The 5th March, the regent sent again to borrow 1000 pieces of eight in
the name of the king; and I was forced to lend him 500, lest he might
have quarrelled with me, which would have given much pleasure to the
Hollanders.
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