TRAJECTORY, a term often used, generally for the path of any body, moving either in a void, or in a medium that resists its motion; or even for any curve passing through a given number of points. Thus Newton, Princip. lib. 1. prop. 22. proposes to describe a trajectory that shall pass through five given points.
TRAITOR'S ISLAND, one of the Archipelago called NAVIGATOR'S ISLANDS, in the South Sea (See that article, Suppl.). It is low and flat, with only a hill of some height in the middle; and is divided into two parts by a channel, of which the mouth is about 150 toises wide. It abounds with bananas, yams, and the finest cocoa nuts, which Perouse says he ever saw. About twenty canoes approached the French ships without dread, traded with a good deal of honesty, and never refused, like the natives of the archipelago of Navigators, to give their fruit before they were paid for it; nor, like them, did they give a preference to heads over nails and pieces of iron. They spoke, however, the same language, and had the same ferocious look; their dress, their manner of tatowing, and the form of their canoes, were the same; nor could we (says the author) doubt that they were one and the same people: they differed, indeed, in having universally two joints cut off from the little finger of the left hand; whereas, in the islands of Navigators, I only perceived two individuals who had suffered that operation. They were also of much lower stature, and far less gigantic make; a difference proceeding, no doubt, from the soil of these islands, which being less fertile, is consequently less favourable to the expansion of the human frame.