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the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

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Listings for Author:  

Dampier

 

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William Dampier : "Voyage Round the World" or "Voyage to New Holland"

'Having now, I believe, fairly passed through between New Holland and New Guinea, and having an open sea to the westward, so that to-morrow we intend to steer more to the northwards in order to make the south coast of New Guinea, it seems high time to take leave of New Holland, which I shall do by summing up the few observations I have been able to make on the country and people. I much wished, observing the people, as they differ so much from the account that Dampier (the only man I know of who has seen them besides us) has given of them: he indeed saw them on a part of the coast very distant from where we were, and consequently the people might be different; but I should rather conclude them to be the same, chiefly from having observed an universal confomity in such of their customs as came under my observation in the several places we landed upon during the run along the coast. Dampier in general seems to be a faithful relater; but in the voyage in which he touched on the coast of New Holland he was in a ship of pirates; possibly himself not a little tainted by their idle examples, he might have kept no written journal of anything more than the navigation of the ship, and when upon coming home he was solicited to publish an account of his voyage, may have referred to his memory for many particulars relating to the people, etc. These Indians, when covered with their filth, which I believe they never wash off, are, if not coal black, very near it. As negroes, then, he might well esteem them, and add the woolly hair and want of two front teeth in consequence of the similitude in complexion between these and the natives of Africa; but from whatever cause it might arise, certain it is that Dampier either was very much mistaken in his account, or else saw a very different race of people from those we have seen.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks      Print: Book

  

William Dampier : "Voyage round the world" or "Voyage to New Holland"

'This I should suppose to be the gum mentioned by Dampier in his voyage round the world, and by him compared with "Sanjuis draconis", as possibly also that which Tasman saw upon Van Diemen's Land, where he says he saw gum on the trees, and gum lac on the ground.' (See his voyage in a collection published at London in 1694, p. 133)

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks      Print: Book

  

William Dampier : "Voyage round the world" or "Voyage to New Holland"

'All the shoals that were dry at half ebb afforded plenty of fish, left dry in small hollows of the rocks, and a profusion of large shell-fish (Chama gigas) such as Dampier describes, vol. iii. p. 191.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks      Print: Book

  

William Dampier : "Voyage round the world" or "Voyage to New Holland"

'In the evening a small bird of the noddy (Sterna) kind hovered about the ship, and at night settled on the rigging, where it was taken, and proved exactly the same bird as Dampier has described, and given a rude figure of, under the name of a noddy from New Holland (see his Voyages, vol. iii. p. 98, table of birds, Fig. 5).'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks      Print: Book

  

Dampier : Voyages

Edward Fitzgerald to Emily Tennyson [1862], in reponse to request for information on fishing and fishermen (as background for writing of Alfred Tennyson's), and after various observations on the topic: 'Oh dear! this is very learned, very useless, I dare say. But you ask me and I tell my best. I have been almost tempted to write you out some morsels of Dampier's Voyages which I copied out for myself: so fine as they are in their way I think, but they would be no use unless A. T. fell upon them by chance: for, of all horses, Pegasus least likes to drink.'

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Fitzgerald      Print: Book

 

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