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From Amboyna D'Urville proceeded to Hobart Town in Tasmania, a place not visited by any French vessel since the time of Baudin, arriving on the 27th December, 1827. Thirty-five years previously D'Entrecasteaux had met on the shores of this island only a few wretched savages; and ten years later Baudin found it quite deserted.
So in the East the growing rice-crop is often treated with the same considerate regard as a breeding woman. Thus in Amboyna, when the rice is in bloom, the people say that it is pregnant and fire no guns and make no other noises near the field, for fear lest, if the rice were thus disturbed, it would miscarry, and the crop would be all straw and no grain.
Pausing at the great emporium of nutmegs and all-spice, Amboyna, he took measures for strengthening the fortifications of the place, which was well governed by Frederick Houtman, and then proceeded to Ternate and Tidor.
After several days of such fighting, Admiral Mendoza fairly turned his back upon his insignificant opponent, and abandoned his projects upon Java. Bearing away for the Island of Amboyna with the remainder of his fleet, he laid waste several of its villages and odoriferous spice-fields, while Wolfert and his companions entered Bantam in triumph, and were hailed as deliverers.
On the 6th September the Astrolabe again put to sea, and after an uninteresting stay at New Guinea, in the course of which scarcely any specimens of natural history were obtained, except a few mollusca, and still less exact information regarding the customs, religion, or language of its diversified population, steered for Amboyna, which was reached without any accident on the 24th September.
A curving line, marked out by scores of active, and hundreds of extinct, volcanoes may be traced through the whole length of Sumatra and Java, and thence by the islands of Bali, Lombock, Sumbawa, Flores, the Serwatty Islands, Banda, Amboyna, Batchian, Makian, Tidore, Ternate, and Gilolo, to Morty Island.
About the same time Dorislas, a Dutchman naturalized in England, and sent on a mission from the parliament, was murdered at The Hague by some Scotch officers, friends of the banished king; the massacre of Amboyna, thirty years before, was made a cause of revived complaint; and altogether a sum of injuries was easily made up to turn the proposed fantastic coalition into a fierce and bloody war.
He lent me some money to pay my men, and I was lucky enough to obtain three others willing to make the voyage with me to Ternate, and one more who was to return from Mysol. One of my Amboyna lads, however, left me, so that I was still rather short of hands.
Another apprehension I had was, the cruel usage we might meet with from them if we fell into their hands; then the story of Amboyna came into my head, and how the Dutch might perhaps torture us, as they did our countrymen there, and make some of our men, by extremity of torture, confess to crimes they never were guilty of, or own themselves and all of us to be pirates, and so they would put us to death with a formal appearance of justice; and that they might be tempted to do this for the gain of our ship and cargo, worth altogether four or five thousand pounds.
Amboyna is a large city for the East, containing 14,000 people, about 8000 of whom are Europeans, with half that number, perhaps, of Chinese and Arabs. Our great wish was to see a clove plantation in full bearing. We found, however, that the proprietors had discovered that there were more profitable means of employing their ground and labour, and that cacao plantations were superseding them.
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