The Surest Method
Of Teaching People To Behave Honestly Towards Us Is To Behave
Friendly And Honestly Towards Them, And
Then there is no great
reason to fear, that such as give evident proofs of capacity and
civility in the
Common affairs of life should be guilty of treachery
that must turn to their own disadvantage.
CHAPTER XVIII: PROSECUTES HIS VOYAGE TO CERAM.
On the 12th of May, being then in the latitude of 54 minutes south,
and in the longitude of 153 degrees 17 minutes, we found the
variation 6 degrees 30 minutes to the east. We continued coasting
the north side of the island of William Schovten, which is about
eighteen or nineteen miles long, very populous, and the people very
brisk and active. It was with great caution that Schovten gave his
name to this island, for having observed that there were abundance
of small islands laid down in the charts on the coast of New Guinea,
he was suspicious that this might be of the number. But since that
time it seems a point generally agreed, that this island had not
before any particular name; and therefore, in all subsequent
voyages, we find it constantly mentioned by the name of Schovten's
Island.
He describes it as a very fertile and well-peopled island; the
inhabitants of which were so far from discovering anything of a
savage nature, that they gave apparent testimonies of their having
had an extensive commerce before he touched there, since they not
only showed him various commodities from the Spaniards, but also
several samples of China ware; he observes that they are very unlike
the nations he had seen before, being rather of an olive colour than
black; some having short, others long hair, dressed after different
fashions; they were also a taller, stronger, and stouter people than
their neighbours.
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