At Length We Sent Our Boat, With Five Men In Her, To
See Whither They Rowed, And So With A
White cloth brought one of
their boats with their men along the shore, rowing after our boat,
till such time
As they saw our ship, and then they rowed ashore.
Then I went on shore myself, and gave every of them a threaden
point, and brought one of them aboard of me, where he did eat and
drink, and then carried him on shore again. Whereupon all the rest
came aboard with their boats, being nineteen persons, and they
spake, but we understood them not. They be like to Tartars, with
long black hair, broad faces, and flat noses, and tawny in colour,
wearing seal skins, and so do the women, not differing in the
fashion, but the women are marked in the face with blue streaks down
the cheeks and round about the eyes. Their boats are made all of
seal skins, with a keel of wood within the skin: the proportion of
them is like a Spanish shallop, save only they be flat in the bottom
and sharp at both ends.
The twentieth day we weighed, and went to the east side of this
island, and I and the captain, with four men more, went on shore,
and there we saw their houses, and the people espying us, came
rowing towards our boat, whereupon we plied to our boat; and we
being in our boat and they ashore, they called to us, and we rowed
to them, and one of their company came into our boat, and we carried
him aboard, and gave him a bell and a knife; so the captain and I
willed five of our men to set him ashore at a rock, and not among
the company which they came from, but their wilfulness was such that
they would go to them, and so were taken themselves and our boat
lost.
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