[page 64]

[Monday - 16th.] in Keppel Bay.

No natives having been seen in our neighbourhood, now for a week, I considered there was no danger in indulging the seamen with a walk on shore. They
natives made their appearance suddenly, to the number of 20, in the neighbourhood of Cape Keppel, with spears which they kept poised in a threatening attitude; but these they were afterwards prevailed with to layd aside, and many of them came nearly to the ships with the seamen, in a peaceable manner
  The masters mate and seaman who were left on shore, had incautiously strayed away by themselves although they knew of the natives being near, and when they should have been at the beach were entangled in a mangrove swamp some miles back distant from it. In the morning they met with the natives, who gave them some food and conducted them to the shore. - At this time I had taken the whale boat round to Cape Keppel to take bearings from thence, and partly to look after these two people men, so that I saw nothing of the natives but except at a distance; but they are described by the gentlemen who went to them as being a stout muscular people; having no arms, and apparently intending no offence. They seemed to understand bartering better than most or perhaps than any people we had seen. They had the same kind of hard tumours upon the bone of the wrist, as the people of Sandy Cape had, and the cause of it was