This course ought rather to have been called W.S.W. as
Pulo Condore is lat.
8 deg. 40' N.]
Pulo Condore is the chief of a group of isles, and the only one of them
that is inhabited, in lat. 8 deg. 44' N. long. 106 deg. 5' E. forty leagues S.
by E. from the mouth of the river of Cambodia, otherwise called the
Japanese river. Two of these isles are tolerably high and large, and
the rest very small. The principal isle, off which we anchored, is five
leagues long from E. to W. and three leagues broad, but in some places
not a mile. The other large isle is three miles long from N. to S. and
between these, at the west end of the largest, there is a convenient
harbour, the entrance being on the north, where the two isles are a mile
asunder. On the largest isle there grows a tall tree, three or four feet
diameter, which the inhabitants cut horizontally half through, a foot
from the ground, after which they cut out the upper part in a slope,
till it meets the transverse cut, whence a liquor distils into a hollow
made in the semicircular shelf, or stump, which, after being boiled,
becomes good tar, and if boiled still more, becomes perfect pitch, both
of these answering well for marine use. Such a tree produces two quarts
of this juice daily for a month, after which it dries up, but recovers
again.
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