We Saw Three Or Four Persons On This
Island, But They Went Away And Would Not Come Near Us:
It was supposed
these people were left here to gather cocoa-nuts, to have them ready
when others should come to carry them away.
The 26th of the same month,
July 1605, we came to anchor within a league of a large island called
Bata,[72] in lat. 20' S. We here set up a shallop or bark, and named
her the Bat. This island has no inhabitants, but abounds in woods and
streams of water, as also with fish, monkies, and a kind of bird, said
to be the bat of the country, of which I killed one as large as a
hare. In shape it resembled a squirrel; only that from its sides there
hung down great flaps of skin; which, when he leapt from tree to tree,
he could spread out like a pair of wings, as though to fly with
them.[73] They are very nimble, and leap from bough to bough, often
holding only by their tails. As our shallop was built in the kingdom of
these beasts, we called her therefore the Bat.
[Footnote 72: Pulo Botoa is about as much north of the line as Bata
is said in the text to be south. But the island at which they stopt may
have been Pulo Mintaon, about 40 minutes in length from S. to N. and
the north end of which reaches to the equator.
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