different officers which always characterised him, having procured and
taken on board their respective investments.

In his passage to Batavia, Lieutenant Ball saw some islands, to which,
conjecturing, from not finding them in any charts which he had on board,
that he might claim being the discoverer of them, he gave names
accordingly. Although anxious to make an expeditious passage, he had the
mortification to be baffled by contrary winds both to and from Batavia;
and at that settlement, instead of finding the governor-general (to whom
in his orders he was directed to apply for permission to purchase
provisions, and for a ship to bring them) ready to forward the service he
came on, which he represented as requiring the utmost expedition, he was
referred to the Sabandhaar, Mr. N. Engelhard, who, after much delay and
pretence of difficulty in procuring a vessel, produced one, a snow, which
they estimated at three hundred and fifty tons burden, and demanded to be
paid for at the rate of eighty rix dollars for every ton freight,
amounting together to twenty-eight thousand rix dollars, each rix dollar
being computed at forty-eight Dutch pennies; and the freight was to be
paid although the vessel should be lost on the passage.

As it was impossible to hire any vessel there upon cheaper terms,
Lieutenant Ball was compelled to engage for the _Waaksamheyd_ (that being
her name, which, englished, signified 'Good look out') upon the terms
they proposed. Of the provisions which he was instructed to procure, the
whole quantity of flour, two hundred thousand pounds, was not to be had,
he being able only to purchase twenty thousand and twenty-one pounds, for
which they charged ten stivers per pound, and an addition of about
one-third of a penny per pound was charged for grinding it*. Instead of
the flour Lieutenant Ball purchased two hundred thousand pounds of rice,
at one rix dollar and forty-four stivers per hundred weight over and