The Cochin-Chinese

These islands lie very commodiously in the way to and from Japan, China, Manila, Tonquin, Cochin-china, and in general all this most easterly coast of the Indian continent.

Whether you go through the Straits of Malacca, or the Straits of Sunda between Sumatra and Java: and one of them you must pass in the common way from Europe or other parts of the East Indies unless you mean to fetch a great compass round most of the East India Islands, as we did.

Any ship in distress may be refreshed and recruited here very conveniently; and besides ordinary accommodations be furnished with masts, yards, pitch and tar.

It might also be a convenient place to usher in a commerce with the neighbouring country of Cochin-china, and forts might be built to secure a factory; particularly at the harbour, which is capable of being well fortified.

This place therefore being upon all these accounts so valuable, and withal so little known, I have here inserted a draft of it, which I took during our stay there.

THE MALAYAN TONGUE

Its people are Cochin-chinese. One of them spoke good Malayan: which language we learnt a smattering of, and some of us so as to speak it pretty well, while we lay at Mindanao.

This is the common tongue of trade and commerce in most of the East India Islands. It is the Lingua Franca of these parts.

It is the vulgar tongue at Malacca, Sumatra, Java, and Borneo.

But at Celebes, the Philippine Islands, and the Spice Islands it seems borrowed for the carrying on of trade.

The inhabitants of Pulo Condore are small, well enough shaped, and of a darker colour than the Mindanayans.

They are pretty long-visaged; their hair is black and straight, their eyes are but small and black, their noses of a mean bigness, and pretty high, their lips thin, their teeth white, and little mouths.

They are very civil people but extraordinary poor.

Their chiefest employment is to draw the juice of those trees that I have described to make tar.

They preserve it in wooden troughs; and when they have their cargo they transport it to Cochin-china, their mother country.

Some others of them employ themselves to catch turtle, and boil up their fat to oil, which they also transport home.

These people have great large nets with wide meshes to catch the turtle. The Jamaica turtlers have such; and I did never see the like nets but at Jamaica and here.

The Custom Of Prostituting Their Women In These Countries, And In Guinea.

They are so free of their women that they would bring them aboard and offer them to us

Many of our men hired them for a small matter. This is a custom used by several nations in the East Indies, as at Pegu, Siam, Cochin-china, and Cambodia, as I have been told.

It is used at Tonquin also to my knowledge; for I did afterwards make a voyage thither, and most of our men had women aboard all the time of our abode there.

In Africa also, on the coast of Guinea, our merchants, factors, and seamen that reside there have their black misses.

It is accounted a piece of policy to do it; for the chief factors and captains of ships have the great men’s daughters offered them, the mandarins’ or noblemen’s at Tonquin, and even the king’s wives in Guinea; and by this sort of alliance the country people are engaged to a greater friendship: and if there should arise any difference about trade or anything else which might provoke the natives to seek some treacherous revenge (to which all these heathen nations are very prone) then these Delilahs would certainly declare it to their white friends, and so hinder their countrymen’s design.

The Idolatry Here, At Tonquin, And Among The Chinese Seamen, And Of A Procession At Fort St. George.

These people are idolaters.

There are a few scattering houses and plantations on the great island. There is a small village on the south side of it where there is a little idol-temple, and an image of an elephant, about 5 foot high and in bigness proportionable, placed on one side of the temple; and a horse not so big, placed on the other side of it.

Both stand with their heads towards the south. The temple itself was low and ordinary, built of wood and thatched like one of their houses; which are but very meanly.

The images of the horse and the elephant were the most general idols that I observed in the temples of Tonquin when I travelled there.

There were other images also, of beasts, birds and fish. I do not remember I saw any human shape there; nor any such monstrous representations as I have seen among the Chinese.

Wherever the Chinese seamen or merchants come (and they are very numerous all over these seas) they have always hideous idols on board their junks or ships, with altars, and lamps burning before them. These idols they bring ashore with them: and beside those they have in common every man has one in his own house.

Upon some particular solemn days I have seen their bonzies, or priests, bring whole armfuls of painted papers and burn them with a great deal of ceremony, being very careful to let no piece escape them.

The same day they killed a goat which had been purposely fatting a month before; this they offer or present before their idol, and then dress it and feast themselves with it. I have seen them do this in Tonquin, where I have at the same time been invited to their feasts.

At Bencoolen in the isle of Sumatra they sent a shoulder of the sacrificed goat to the English, who ate of it, and asked me to do so too; but I refused.

When I was at Madras, or Fort St. George, I took notice of a great ceremony used for several nights successively by the idolaters inhabiting the suburbs: both men and women (these very well clad) in a great multitude went in solemn procession with lighted torches, carrying their idols about with them. I knew not the meaning of it.

I observed some went purposely carrying oil to sprinkle into the lamps to make them burn the brighter. They began their round about 11PM and, having paced it gravely about the streets till two or three o’clock in the morning, their idols were carried with much ceremony into the temple by the chief of the procession, and some of the women I saw enter the temple, particularly. Their idols were different from those of Tonquin, Cambodia, etc., being in human shape.

They Refit Their Ship

We arrived at these islands on March 14, 1687.

The next day we searched about for a place to careen in; and the 16th day we entered the harbour and immediately provided to careen.

Some men were set to fell great trees to saw into planks; others went to unrigging the ship; some made a house to put our goods in and for the sail-maker to work in. The country people resorted to us and brought us of the fruits of the island, with hogs, and sometimes turtle; for which they received rice in exchange, which we had a shipload of, taken at Manila.

We bought of them also a good quantity of their pitchy liquor, which we boiled, and used about our ship’s bottom. We mixed it first with lime which we made here, and it made an excellent coat and stuck on very well.

We stayed in this harbour from the 16th day of March till the 16th of April; in which time we made a new suit of sails of the cloth that was taken in the prize. We cut a spare main-top-mast and sawed plank to sheath the ship’s bottom; for she was not sheathed all over at Mindanao, and that old plank that was left on then we now ripped off and clapped on new.

While we lay here two of our men died, who were poisoned at Mindanao, they told us of it when they found themselves poisoned and had lingered ever since.

They were opened by our doctor, according to their own request before they died, and their livers were black, light and dry, like pieces of cork.

THEY TAKE IN WATER, AND A PILOT FOR THE BAY OF SIAM.

Our business being finished here we left the Spanish prize taken at Manila, and most of the rice, taking out enough for ourselves, and on the 17th day we went from hence to the place where we first anchored, on the north side of the great island, purposely to water; for there was a great stream when we first came to the island, and we thought it was so now.

But we found it dried up, only it stood in holes, two or three hogsheads or a tun in a hole: therefore we did immediately cut bamboos and made spouts through which we conveyed the water down to the seaside by taking it up in bowls, and pouring it into these spouts or troughs. We conveyed some of it thus near half a mile.

While we were filling our water Captain Read engaged an old man, one of the inhabitants of this island, the same who I said could speak the Malayan language, to be his pilot to the Bay of Siam; for he had often been telling us that he was well acquainted there, and that he knew some islands there where there were fishermen lived who he thought could supply us with salt-fish to eat at sea; for we had nothing but rice to eat.

The easterly monsoon was not yet done; therefore it was concluded to spend some time there and then take the advantage of the beginning of the western monsoon to return to Manila again.

The 21st day of April 1687 we sailed from Pulo Condore, directing our course west by south for the Bay of Siam. We had fair weather and a fine moderate gale of wind at east-north-east.