sure were the probable length of the
voyage, and when there, the chance of being delayed until the adverse
monsoon should set in against us, by which our return to Port Jackson
would be perhaps prevented. To undertake the second would, from our being
weakly manned, subject us to danger from the Malay piratical proas in
passing the Straits; but as the latter mode of proceeding could be
resorted to in the event of our failing in the other, our united opinion
was that, of the two plans, the better was to go to Timor. Upon this
decision all hands were immediately set to work to fill our empty
water-casks with salt water and to get all the weighty things off the
deck into the hold, in order to give the vessel more stability.

October 25.

This was completed by night and at break of day we left the anchorage
with a fresh breeze from East-South-East.

Considering the short time we were on shore it would be the greatest
presumption for me to say anything respecting Savu, when so good an
account is already before the public in Captain Cook's voyage.* Every
circumstance that we could compare with it is still correct, except that
the women appear to have lost the decency he describes them to possess;
for there were several whom curiosity and the novelty of our arrival had
brought down to see us, naked to the hips, which alone supported a
petticoat or wrapper of blue cotton stuff that exposed their knees.

(*Footnote. Hawkesworth Coll. Volume 3 page 277 et seq.)

The beach was lined with the areca, or fan-palm tree, from which the
well-known liquor called toddy is procured. During our conference with
these people they were all busily employed in eating the fruit spike of
the piper betle,* which they first thickly covered with shell-lime; after
chewing it for some time, they spit it out into the hand of the attendant
slave who completes the exhaustion of this luxurious morceau by conveying
it to his own mouth.

(*Footnote. Persoon, in his description of areca catechu, makes the
following observation: E fructu ab extima pellicula libero, simul cum
foliis piperis betle, addito pauxillo calcis ex ostreis, fit
masticatorium, quod Indiani continue volvunt in ore, ut malus anhelitus
corrigatur, et dentes ac stomachus roborentur. Persoon, Syn. Plant. pars.
2 577.)

They have a small-sized breed of horses at Savu, similar to that of
Rottee; and pigs, sheep, and poultry appeared to be very plentiful. No
observations were taken during