Voyages to the East Indies

Voyages to the East Indies: 1680 to 1686/1676 to 1683 by Christopher Fryke and Christopher Schweitzer was first published in 1700. Both were minor employees of the Dutch East India Company; one a surgeon and the other who volunteered to be a ship's steward. Engaged for the most part in the humdrum routine of trade, administration and police in the Eastern seas and islands, they present us with a lively picture of everyday life in the great overseas empire of the seventeenth century Netherlands. Shrewd and a keen eye for everything new and strange, their accounts of life on board, of battles and shipwrecks, of seaports from Colombo to Nagasaki, of Cape Hottentots, Sinhalese pearl fishers, Javanese villagers are vivid and detailed. This is an English translation from the Dutch.