Gilolo, who could speak Malay, as woodcutter and general
assistant; and Garo, a hoy who was to act as cook. As
the boat was so small that we had hardly room to stow
ourselves away when all my stores were on board, I only
took one other man nariied Latchi, as pilot. He was a
Papuan slave, a tall, strong black fellow, but very civil and
careful. The boat I had hired from a Chinaman named
Lau Keng Tong, for five guilders a month.
We started on the morning of October 9th, but had
not got a hundred yards from land, when a strong head
wind sprung up, against which we could not row, so we
crept along shore to below the town, and waited till the
turn of the tide should enable us to cross over to the coast
of Tidore. About three in the afternoon we got off, and
found that our boat sailed well, and would keep pretty
close to the wind. We got on a good way before the wind
fell and we had to take to our oars again. We landed
on a nice sandy beach to cook our suppers, just as the
sun set behind the rugged volcanic hills, to the south of
the great cone of Tidore, and soon after beheld the planet
Venus shining in the twilight with the brilliancy of a new
moon, and casting a very distinct shadow. We left again
a little before seven, and as we got out from the shadow of
the mountain I observed a bright light over one part of the
ridge, and soon after, what seemed a fire of remarkable
whiteness on the very summit of the hill. I called the
attention of my men to it, and they too thought it merely
a fire; but a few minutes afterwards, as we got farther off
shore, the light rose clear up above the ridge of the hill,
and some faint clouds clearing away from it, discovered
the magnificent comet which was at the same time
astonishing all Europe. The nucleus presented to the
naked eye a distinct disc of brilliant white light, from
which the tail rose at an angle of about 30° or 35° with
the horizon, curving slightly downwards, and terminating
in a broad brush of faint light, the curvature of which
diminished till it was nearly straight at the end. The
portion of the tail next the comet appeared three or four
times as bright as the most luminous portion of the
milky way, and what struck me as a singular feature was
that its upper margin, from the nucleus to very near the
extremity, was clearly and almost sharply defined, while
the lower side gradually shaded off into obscurity.
Directly it rose above the ridge of the hill, I said to my
men, “'See, it’s not a fire, it’s a bintang ber-ekor ” (“ tailed-
star,” the Malay idiom for a comet). “ So it is,” said they ;
and all declared that they had often heard tell of such,
but had never seen one till now. I had no telescope
with me, nor any instrument at hand, but I estimated the
length of the tail at about 20p, and the width, towards the
extremity, about 4° or 5°.
The whole of the next day we were obliged to stop near