The
Country Of Pahan Is Very Plentiful, Being Full Of Gentry According To
The Fashion Of That Country, Having Great Store Of Victuals, Which Are
Very Cheap, And Many Ships.
It lies between Johor and Patane, stretching
along the eastern coast of Malacca, and reaches to Cape Tingeron,
which
Is a very high cape, and the first land made by the caraks of
Macao, junks of China, or praws of Cambodia, on coming from China for
Malacca, Java, Jumbe, Johor Palimbangan, Grisi, or any other parts to
the southwards.
Here, as I stood for Patane, about the 27th December, I met with a
Japanese junk, which had been pirating along the coasts of China and
Cambodia. Their pilot dying, what with ignorance and foul weather, they
had lost their own ship on certain shoals of the great island of Borneo;
and not daring to land there, as the Japanese are not allowed to come
a-shore in any part of India with their weapons, being a desperate
people, and so daring that they are feared in all places; wherefore, by
means of their boats, they had entered this junk, which belonged to
Patane, and slew all the people except one old pilot. This junk was
laden with rice; and having furnished her with such weapons and other
things as they had saved from their sunken ship, they shaped their
course for Japan; but owing to the badness of their junk, contrary
winds, and the unseasonable time of the year, they were forced to
leeward, which was the cause of my unfortunately meeting them.
Having haled them and made them come to leeward, and sending my boat on
board, I found their men and equipment very disproportionate for so
small a junk, being only about seventy tons, yet they were ninety men,
most of them in too gallant habits for sailors, and had so much equality
of behaviour among them that they seemed all comrades. One among them
indeed was called captain, but he seemed to be held in very little
respect. I made them come to anchor, and on examining their lading,
found nothing but rice, and that mostly spoilt with wet, for their
vessel was leaky both in her bottom and upper works. Questioning them, I
understood they were pirates, who had been making pillage on the coast
of China and Cambodia, and had lost their own ship on the shoals of
Borneo, as already related. We rode by them at anchor under a small
island near the isle of Bintang for two days, giving them good usage,
and not taking any thing out of them, thinking to have gathered from
them the place and passage of certain ships from the coast of China, so
as to have made something of our voyage: But these rogues, being
desperate in minds and fortunes, and hopeless of ever being able to
return to their own country in that paltry junk, had resolved among
themselves either to gain my ship or lose their own lives.
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