Page:Narrative of a survey of the intertropical and western coasts of Australia, Volume 1.djvu/197

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COASTS OF AUSTRA[JA. 137 are 'a cargo'for a proa. It is carried to Tunor ?s?s. and sold to the Chinese, who meet them there; June and when all the proas are assembled, the fleet returns to Macassar. By Timor, seemed to be meant Timor-laoet; for when I inquired concern- ing 'the English, Dutch, and Portuguese there, Pobasso (the rajah in command) knew nothing of them: he had heard of Coepang, a Dutch settle- ment, but said it was upon another island. "There are two kinds of trepang. The black, called baatoo, is seld to the Chinese for forty dollars the picol; the white, or gray, called/?oro, is worth no more than twenty. The baatoo seems to be what we found upon the coral reefs near the Northumberland Islands; and Were a colony esta- blished in Broad Sound, or Shoal-water Bay, it might perhaps derive considerable advantage from the trepang. In the OulfofCarpentaria we did not observe any other than the gray slng*." ARer having fished along the coast to the east- ward until the westerly monsoon breaks up, they return, and by the last day of May each de- tached fleet leaves the coast without waiting to collect into one body. On their return they steer lq.W., which brings them to some part of Timor, from whenco they easily retrace their steps to

  • FLINOBP,8, VOL iJ, p. 231.