[Narrative of the Voyages Round the World, Performed by Captain James Cook: with an Account of His Life During the Previous and Intervening Periods by Andrew Kippis]@TWC D-Link book
Narrative of the Voyages Round the World, Performed by Captain James Cook: with an Account of His Life During the Previous and Intervening Periods

CHAPTER VII
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The method of conducting them was by passing ropes through their nostrils and round their horns; but, having been once enraged at the sight of our men, they became so furious that they sometimes broke the trees to which they were often under the necessity of being tied; sometimes they tore asunder the cartilage of the nostril through which the ropes ran, and got loose.

On these occasions, all the exertions of the men to recover them would have been ineffectual, without the assistance of some young boys, whom these animals would permit to approach them, and by whose little management their rage was soon appeased.

A circumstance respecting these animals, which was thought no less singular than their gentleness toward, and, as it should seem, affection for, little children, was, that they had not been twenty-four hours on board, before they became the tamest of all creatures.

Captain King kept two of them, a male and a female, for a considerable time, which became great favourites with the sailors; and thinking that a breed of animals of such strength and size, some of them weighing when dressed, seven hundred pounds, would be a valuable acquisition, intended to have brought them with him to England, but his intention was frustrated by an incurable hurt which one of them received at sea.
Our navigators remained here till the 28th of January, when they unmoored and proceeded on their homeward voyage, passing through the Straits of Banea, and of Sunda, without any occurrence worthy of particular remark.

They saw two or three Dutch ships in the Straits of Sunda.


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