Early Next Morning, I Sent Lieutenants Pickersgill And Edgecumbe With A
Party Of Men, Accompanied By Several Of The Gentlemen, To Examine The
Country.
As I was not sufficiently recovered from my late illness to make
one of the party, I was obliged to content myself with remaining at the
landing-place among the natives.
We had, at one time, a pretty brisk trade
with them for potatoes, which we observed they dug up out of an adjoining
plantation; but this traffic, which was very advantageous to us, was soon
put a stop to by the owner (as we supposed) of the plantation coming down,
and driving all the people out of it. By this we concluded, that he had
been robbed of his property, and that they were not less scrupulous of
stealing from one another, than from us, on whom they practised every
little fraud they could think of, and generally with success; for we no
sooner detected them in one, than they found out another. About seven
o'clock in the evening, the party I had sent into the country returned,
after having been over the greatest part of the island.
They left the beach about nine o'clock in the morning, and took a path
which led across to the S.E. side of the island, followed by a great crowd
of the natives, who pressed much upon them. But they had not proceeded far,
before a middle-aged man, punctured from head to foot, and his face painted
with a sort of white pigment, appeared with a spear in his hand, and walked
along-side of them, making signs to his countrymen to keep at a distance,
and not to molest our people.
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