At Coepang we could procure everything we wanted; and the only arguments against such a measure 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.