Note (return) — Chapter XIII · VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD, BY COMMODORE ROGGEWEIN, is 1721-1723.1

They had given to this island, before this unfortunate affair, the name of the Island of Recreation,3 which is in lat. 16° S. and long. 285°. It is about twelve leagues in compass, with a fertile soil, producing a great number of trees, especially cocoa nuts, palms, and iron-wood. The Dutch conceived that there might be rich mines in the heart of the country, and other valuable things, but were not allowed to search. The natives were of middle size, but robust and active, having long black shining hair, which they anoint with cocoa-nut oil, a practice very common among the Indians. They were painted all over, like the inhabitants of Easter island; the men wearing a kind of net-work round their middles, which they stick up between their legs. The women were entirely covered by a kind of mantles of their own manufacture, the stuff of which to the sight and touch resembled silk;4 and they wear long strings of pearls about their necks and wrists.