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Updated: June 25, 2025
Five or six new houses had been added to the street; the praus were all brought round to the western side of the point, where they were hauled up on the beach, and were being caulked and covered with a thick white lime-plaster for the homeward voyage, making them the brightest and cleanest looking things in the place.
After minute inquiries, I found that the forest country commenced at a place called Waypoti, only a few miles beyond Pelah, but that, as the coast beyond that place was exposed to the east monsoon and dangerous for praus, it was necessary to walk. I immediately went to the Opzeiner, and he called the Rajah.
They also extend their voyages to Tidore and Ternate, as well as to Banda and Amboyna, Their praus are all made by that wonderful race of boatbuilders, the Ke islanders, who annually turn out some hundreds of boats, large and small, which can hardly be surpassed for beauty of form and goodness of workmanship, They trade chiefly in tripang, the medicinal mussoi bark, wild nutmegs, and tortoiseshell, which they sell to the Bugis traders at Ceram-laut or Aru, few of them caring to take their products to any other market.
Not another word was spoken, and for quite a quarter of an hour there was an ominous silence as they all waited for the talking to begin again on board the vessels. But there was not a sound, and it was evident that the crews were listening, when suddenly Morgan laid his hand upon the captain's arm, and pointed in the direction of the lagoon about half-way between them and the praus.
Jorgenson pointed at the mass of praus, coasting boats, and sampans that, jammed up together in the canal, lay covered with mats and flooded by the cold moonlight with here and there a dim lantern burning amongst the confusion of high sterns, spars, masts and lowered sails.
As yet the Malays had not gained a permanent footing on the deck, but for every man that was felled or hurled back into the praus there were a dozen to fill the gap, and the most valorous of fighters could not long contend against such odds. For a little while Smith was perplexed as to what he could do to help them.
The rigging and arrangement of these praus contrasts strangely with that of European vessels, in which the various ropes and spars, though much more numerous, are placed so as not to interfere with each other's action.
But at length seeing that all our good intentions were of no avail, and that all the natives had put on their wooden corselets and rope armor and had armed themselves with their lances, shields, small cutlasses, and arrows; and that many plumes and varicolored headdresses were waving; and that help of men had come in praus from the outside, so that their number must be almost two thousand warriors; and considering that now was the time for us to make a settlement and effect a colony, and that the present port and location were exactly suited to our needs, and that it was useless for us to wait any longer; and seeing that there was no hope for peace, and that they did not wish it, although we had offered it the master-of-camp said to the natives through an interpreter: "Since you do not desire our friendship, and will not receive us peacefully, but are anxious for war, wait until we have landed; and look to it that you act as men, and defend yourselves from us, and guard your houses."
There was occasion for the growl; and it was their temporary saving that the men had ceased rowing, for the fiery look of the water would have betrayed their whereabouts as it did that of a vessel coming toward them, and they were not long in realising that it was one of the praus being rowed cautiously toward the shore.
Five praus of natives set out for the province of Baybay, taking with them articles of barter Legazpi preferring that natives should go on this errand, as he feared that the Spaniards would wrong the islanders. These men delayed, as well as those who went to Panay, and it was thought, purposely, believing that the Spaniards would be driven from the island by hunger.
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