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Updated: May 9, 2025
Applies for a passage to England. Purchases the Waaksambeyd for that purpose. Leaves Batavia. Passes the Keelings. Arrives at the Cape of Good Hope. Leaves that place, and anchors at Saint Helena. Departs from Saint Helena. Arrives at Portsmouth. Captain Hunter's letter to the Lords of the Admiralty.
The southern group consists of seven or eight islands and islets on the atoll, which is the skeleton of what some day, according to the history of coral reefs, will be a continuous island. North Keeling has no harbor, is seldom visited, and is of no importance. The South Keelings are a strange little world, with a romantic history all their own.
On the 30th, as we were steering south-west, we kept a good lookout all night for the islands called Keelings, or Cocos Islands; being uncertain whether their situation was well ascertained: at noon on the 31st, the latitude observed was 12° 10' south; this I supposed to be rather to the southward of them, and altered the course to west-south-west: at three in the afternoon, we discovered the islands under our lee, distant about four leagues: there are three of them well covered with wood, but they are very low and flat; there are several smaller spots like rocks above water; the larger islands have sandy beaches, and in many places there were very high breakers: the latitude of the south side is 12° 06' south; the longitude by account from Java Head, but afterwards confirmed by observations of is 98° 03' east.
For music two fiddles screeched over and over again the good old tune, "We won't go home till morning." And we did not. The women at the Keelings do not do all the drudgery, as in many places visited on the voyage. It would cheer the heart of a Fuegian woman to see the Keeling lord of creation up a cocoanut-tree.
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