In 1740 a naval commander, George Anson, was dispatched to the Pacific to take part in that ocean in the naval war against Spain. Apparently, after rounding the extremity of South America, he was content at first to proceed up the coast of Peru and plunder the Spanish towns on the western coast of Tropical Africa. He then sailed across the Pacific with his Spanish prizes by way of the Spanish route to the Philippines, making no new discoveries on his way, but passing through the Malay Archipelago to the Cape of Good Hope. Twenty-two years afterwards a British fleet, conveying 6000 soldiers, sailed across the Indian Ocean and took possession of Manila, but failed to conquer the Philippine archipelago, owing to the bravery of the small Spanish garrison of 600 men. But when this war drew to a close, Vice-Admiral John Byron (the grandfather of Lord Byron, the poet) was sent out in the Dolphin in 1764 to explore the Pacific Ocean and make some search for the Great Southern Continent. This journey, however, like that of Lord Anson's, resulted in no gain to geographical knowledge, for he simply sailed by the northern tropical route from Mexico to the Ladrone Islands, and then came back along much the same course to South America and the Atlantic. After his return his ship, the Dolphin, together with a vessel called the Swallow, were once more dispatched to the Pacific Ocean through the Straits of Magellan, but this time under the command of Captain Samuel Wallis.

The Tahiti archipelago, which was to play such an important part as a basis for Cook's discoveries in the Pacific, had apparently been seen by the Spanish navigator de Quiros, as early as 1606, and named "Sagittaria". It was rediscovered in 1767 by Wallis on this voyage of H.M.S. Dolphin. Wallis named Tahiti Island "King George III Island", and stayed on its coasts for a month. On his north-westward journey he discovered the Marshall Islands. In the following year there arrived at Tahiti the great Bougainville, the first French explorer of the Pacific Ocean.

France, through her enterprising Norman and Breton seamen, was not slow to interest herself in Far Eastern discoveries, and in 1528 defied the Papal bull and worried the Portuguese in Malaysia, just as she followed up Spaniards and Portuguese along the east coast of the Americas. Early in the sixteenth century her mariners, following the Portuguese, had rounded the Cape of Good Hope and adventured themselves in the Indian Ocean to snatch a small share in the trade which was so jealously monopolized by the Spaniards and Portuguese. It is even said (see p. 57) that the first hint of the existence of a Great Southern Continent is due to a French navigator, le Testu, who returned in 1532 from the eastern seas with stories of a Greater Java which lay to the south of the islands of the Malay Archipelago.

But for various reasons the French slackened in their exploration of the Indian Ocean in the second half of the sixteenth century. Their interest in this direction was only revived under the great ministers of Henry IV and Louis XIII. In the first half of the seventeenth century the French laid the foundation of their future claims to Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands, and founded repeatedly chartered companies to deal with the trade of the Indian Ocean. But none of their adventurers seem to have penetrated to the Spice Islands or the Pacific until the eighteenth century. Their colonial ambitions in Africa and Asia were awakened in a great measure through the most remarkable of their kings, Louis XIV. With farsighted ambition this monarch strove to acquire special interests for France in Abyssinia (in which direction he failed), in Siam, and Cochin China; and he took advantage of his occasional alliances or friendship with the Spanish monarch to send explorers and men of science to examine the wonderful regions of South America, under the jealous rule of Spain and Portugal. One of these explorers was FrÉzier (Fraser), of Scottish descent, and the work which he published on his return, dealing with the southern extremity of South America, drew attention to the unoccupied Falkland Islands, known to the French as Malouines, and the Spaniards as Malvinas. This hint attracted the notice of a very remarkable Frenchman, Louis Antoine de Bougainville, who had served in the French Embassy in London, and had also been an officer of the French army in Canada. In 1765 he persuaded the merchants of St. Malo, in Brittany, to fit out an expedition which should colonize the Falkland Islands. But, this archipelago being claimed by Spain, it was handed over to the Spanish authorities by Bougainville, who afterwards proceeded in command of a ship called the Boudeuse (the Sulker) to navigate the Straits of Magellan and explore the Pacific Ocean. In his westward course he touched at the Tuamotu Islands, and rediscovered the Island of Tahiti, which he called CythÈre (the Island of Venus). Sailing westwards, he was probably the first explorer to discover the Samoa group, named by him the Navigators' Islands, from the bold seamanship of its Polynesian people. From Samoa he passed on to the New Hebrides, and, then directing his course due west, with the deliberate intention of searching for the Great Southern Continent, he was stopped in this search by encountering the Great Barrier Reef, which guards so much of the approach to the north-east coast of Australia from south latitude 23° to 15°. Turning off, therefore, to the north-west, he encountered and named the Louisiade archipelago of islands and islets, which is off the south-easternmost extremity of New Guinea. Instead, however, of venturing through the Torres Straits (the existence of which was then a geographical secret in possession of Spain), he turned northwards to the Solomon Islands,[66] and thence sailed past the coasts of the large island of New Ireland (now known as New Mecklenburg), and so on along the north coast of New Guinea. Rounding this great island, and directing his course southward, he arrived at the island of Buru, between the Moluccas and Celebes. Here he found himself within the sphere of Dutch influence, and after calling in at Batavia, the capital of Java, he made his way back, round the Cape of Good Hope, to St. Malo, only having lost seven out of a crew of two hundred men in this remarkable sea journey round the world.

Thus, before Cook set out on his famous journey in 1768, the position of European knowledge in regard to the Pacific Ocean and the continent and islands of Australasia was as follows: The outline of the Australian continent had been roughly traced by the Dutch (who called the land New Holland) from Cape York westwards to the southernmost point of Tasmania (which was not known to be an island); a portion of the west coast of New Zealand (the North Island and a small part of the South) had been placed on the map by Tasman, but it was not known whether this land of high mountains consisted of one or more large islands, or whether it might not even be another peninsula of a mighty southern continent; Tasman had discovered the small Tonga Islands; New Guinea was known in regard to its western and eastern extremities and a part of its north coast, but, owing to secrecy having been kept as to the existence of Torres Straits, it was also thought to be an outlying part of New Holland (Australia); New Britain and New Ireland (now Neu Pommern and New Mecklenburg) had been explored by Dampier in 1700; the Solomon Islands, Santa Cruz, and the islands of the New Hebrides group had been rediscovered by Bougainville, who had also first visited and named the Louisiade archipelago to the south-east of New Guinea. [The Solomons and the New Hebrides had been known for two centuries to the Spanish Government, and for a shorter period to Dutch navigators]. Easter Island—the easternmost of the Polynesian islands, not much more than 2000 miles from the coast of South America—had been seen by the English pirate, Captain Davis, in 1685, but was only definitely known and named, after its discovery by the Dutch navigator, Roggeveen,[67] on Easter Sunday in 1722; and was considered by some geographers in Holland and France to be an outlying point of the great southern continent: which, if this were the case, would be almost as large as Asia, and would occupy quite half the space actually covered by the Pacific Ocean. The existence of Tahiti was fully known, inasmuch as it was pitched upon by the British astronomers as being the best place in that region of the globe from which to observe the transit of Venus. The existence of the Marquezas Islands had long been established by Spanish navigators, but it is doubtful whether, before Cook started, news had been received of the sighting of the Tuamotu archipelago of islets by Bougainville, or of the Samoa group (Navigators' Islands). Most of the largest and most important of the Pacific islands remained practically or completely undiscovered. These were the Hawaii archipelago (see pp. 121-2), the Fiji Islands, the southern islands of the New Hebrides, the large island of New Caledonia, the Loyalty Islands, the groups of the Gilbert, Phoenix, and Ellice Islands, the Hervey or Cook Islands, the Tubuai or Austral Islands, besides the whole east coast and Alpine range of New Zealand, and the little Norfolk Island midway between New Zealand and New Caledonia. Finally, there were the undecided questions of the supposed connection of New Guinea with the north coast of the Australian continent, and the existence of a vast southern continent occupying much of the area of the Pacific Ocean in the South Temperate Zone. The whole of these blanks in Australasian geography were filled up and more or less accurately mapped, the vexed questions were set at rest and solved, by the great James Cook in the two voyages of discovery which he made in the years 1768-71, 1772-5, and 1776-9.

Captain James Cook, who will certainly be regarded in universal history as the foremost hero of Australasian discovery, was born on 27 October, 1728, at the little Yorkshire village of Marton, in the Cleveland district of northern Yorkshire, in a two-roomed wattle-and-clay cottage. He was the son of a farm labourer, also named James Cook and said to have been of Scottish origin. In time Cook's father rose to the position of a farm bailiff. The great James Cook, his second son, was sent to school when he was eight years old, and received the elements of a good education, especially in arithmetic. At the age of sixteen or seventeen he was bound apprentice to a grocer and haberdasher, or, more correctly, a general-store dealer, a man, in fact, who kept the principal shop in the pretty little village of Staithes, in a hollow of the cliffs 10 miles north of Whitby. This move brought Cook into close relations with a sea-faring life, as most of the customers of the shop were fishermen and smugglers. In fact, his place of business was only 300 yards from the sea waves (which now entirely cover the site of the original shop).

Evidently he did not like his work as shop apprentice, and longed to become a sailor, with the result that he was transferred as an apprentice to the employment of a coal merchant who owned or employed sailing ships to carry coals to and from Whitby. Earlier accounts of Cook's boyhood assert that he ran away to sea from the grocer-haberdasher's shop, stealing a shilling from the till as something to sustain his enterprise. There certainly was trouble about a shilling in his relations with the general-storekeeper, but it seems to have been that he saw—prophetically enough—a new South Sea shilling[68] in the till, and, fascinated with its appearance, changed it for an ordinary shilling of his own. The new bright shilling was found in his box, but his explanations apparently convinced his employer of his innocence. However, by some friendly arrangement he seems to have been relieved of his apprenticeship to the general-store dealer of Staithes, and was transferred to the employment of a Mr. John Walker, whom he served as apprentice on his ships for about three years. In between his voyages he lived at Mr. Walker's house, where he was treated very kindly and where the housekeeper gave him a table and candles in a quiet corner so that he might read and study in peace. From apprentice he became an able seaman, and at last, in the year 1752 (always working hard to acquire the science of navigation and to educate himself in every way), he became mate of a collier vessel. He was now twenty-four years of age. Three years afterwards—in 1755—Cook, as mate of the collier Friendship, found himself in the Thames on the eve of the outbreak of war between Britain and France, and determined to join the Royal Navy, which he did first as an able seaman; but, his qualities being soon discovered, he was not long afterwards rated as master's mate on board H.M.S. Eagle. Between 1755 and 1762 he was employed mainly in American waters, and distinguished himself there, not only by his gallantry in action and his many hairbreadth escapes, but by his careful surveying work round the coasts of Newfoundland.

In 1762 he returned to England and married. His married life lasted for sixteen years, but it is computed that of that sixteen he spent only about four and a half in his wife's society, chiefly at a house in Shadwell, in the eastern part of London, which he bought for her. Nevertheless they were fond of one another, and a family of six children was born to them in course of time.[69]

Between the time of his marriage and 1768 he began to make himself noteworthy by his publications of sailing directions and his work as a mathematician and astronomer; for he found the opportunity of observing a solar eclipse off the coast of North America, and described it very lucidly. Consequently, when at the instance of the Committee of the Royal Society, who were desirous that the transit of Venus across the disk of the sun should be carefully observed by competent persons from some central part of the Pacific Ocean, the British Admiralty decided to appoint James Cook to take charge of this expedition, and at the same time to make a determined search in the Central and Southern Pacific for the supposed vast southern continent, stretching from the south tropic to the South Pole. Cook, therefore, was given a commission as a lieutenant-commander, and appointed to H.M.S. Endeavour.[70] The Endeavour was a sailing vessel of only 368 tons burden, which had been constructed at Whitby and purchased by the Admiralty.

The Government entrusted to the Royal Society the sum of £4000, to spend on equipping this vessel and paying her officers and crew. Cook apparently received a clear salary of £120 a year, in addition to a special gratuity of £105 for his astronomical work, and a sustenance allowance for himself and his assistant astronomer, Mr. Green, of £120. He was also paid by the Admiralty a small "command" allowance of five shillings a day.

Next in importance to Captain Cook in the history of this remarkable voyage will rank (Sir) Joseph Banks, described by the Royal Society as a gentleman of large fortune, and said in other correspondence of the period to have an estate bringing in £6000 a year. He was born in London in 1743, the son of a wealthy physician who had become a Member of Parliament for Peterborough. Educated at Oxford, he early conceived an intense interest in botany and zoology; and having in 1764 inherited all his father's property, he soon afterwards made at his own expense a scientific expedition to Newfoundland and Labrador, where he made a famous collection of insects and plants.

A neighbouring landowner, Lord Sandwich, had become head of the Admiralty, and Banks obtained through him leave to join Cook's expedition. He then laid out about £10,000 on all the stores and other preparations necessary for the conduct of an elaborate enquiry into the natural history of the lands and seas through which the expedition was to pass, and he engaged a Swedish naturalist, a pupil of LinnÆus—Dr. Daniel Solander—to accompany him, besides four draughtsmen to make pictures, and nine servants to do all the rough work of natural-history collecting, &c.

The diary which Mr.—afterwards Sir Joseph—Banks kept on this voyage, between August, 1768, and July, 1771, is almost as interesting and remarkable as the diary kept on H.M.S. Beagle by his greater successor in the same studies, Charles Darwin. This journal of Sir Joseph Banks really served to give the substance of greatest interest to the volumes published on the First Voyage of Cook, which were edited by Dr. Hawksworth; and although Hawksworth in his introduction laid stress on the important part played in the narrative by the incorporation of Banks's journals (most generously placed at his disposal), nevertheless the mass of the reading public has been too apt to ascribe to Captain James Cook observations and descriptions which were entirely the work of Banks. Though Cook's mighty achievements as a navigator, and as one who laid the foundations of the British Empire in Australasia and British Columbia, can never be lessened by the results of any research into the history of his voyages, it is only fair to point out that the records of his first great adventure would not have achieved their world-wide popularity but for Banks's co-operation and his munificent expenditure on the expedition. Banks, in fact, was a man born out of due time. His was a nineteenth-century mind which made its appearance in the middle of the eighteenth century, just as Shakespeare was an intelligence of the twentieth century which made its appearance three hundred years before its appropriate period. In order not to interrupt the course of the narrative it might be as well to give in a footnote final information as to Sir Joseph Banks's career.[71]

The ship Endeavour sailed from Plymouth on 26 August, 1768, with a crew of officers, naturalists, seamen, and servants, of ninety-four in all, with provisions for eighteen months, and an armament of guns which would be quite sufficient to keep at bay any attack by savages. Captain Cook, from the first, was resolved to combat resolutely that foe of seamen-adventurers—scurvy—the disease which is constantly alluded to in the earlier pages of this book, and which I have described elsewhere as so seriously impeding the first attempts of colonization on the part of the French in Canada. In this resolve he was backed up by Banks, who had made special enquiries on the subject of antiscorbutics. An attempt was made to convey fresh cabbage from England to the Pacific, and casks of this vegetable lasted out for nearly a year. The leaves and the heart of the cabbage were preserved between layers of salt. But the greatest benefit in checking scurvy was derived from lemon juice, of which Banks himself took nearly 6 ounces a day. The juice of oranges and lemons mixed with a little brandy had been evaporated till it was very thick, and this essence was enclosed in small casks before the Endeavour left England. The expedition also took with it treacle, turpentine, and "wort" (the unfermented infusion of malt), with which they were to brew some kind of beer.

The Endeavour's course towards the Pacific was via Brazil (where she was mistaken by the Portuguese for a privateer or pirate and received very badly) and the extremity of South America. Off the coast of Patagonia Banks noticed "shoals of red lobsters", as Dampier had done in the southern Pacific. These "sea crayfish", or Langoustes as they really were (allied to the excellent Langouste of the Mediterranean[72]), frequently astonished the pioneers of the Pacific and south Indian Oceans by their immense numbers which passed in shoals swimming on the surface, very often proving a godsend to the crew by providing them with fresh and savoury food. Unlike the lobster, which is only red when it is boiled, these Langoustes (probably of the genera Iasus or Panulirus) were naturally of a bright crimson or scarlet colour.

Cook, Banks, and some of the seamen landed on Staten Island at the extremity of the curly tail of South America. The Dutch had thought in the previous century that Staten Island was a northern promontory of a vast Antarctic continent, of which New Zealand might be another projection (which was why Tasman had first called New Zealand "Staten Island"). Banks was very anxious to examine its flora, and found far more flowering plants at this season of Antarctic summer than he thought possible of existence in such a cold bleak country; yet, in the very searching for natural-history specimens, he and the rest of the party were caught in a snowstorm and nearly frozen to death. Two negro servants who had drunk too much grog and had lain down to rest were killed by the cold.

After rounding Cape Horn, in January, 1769, the Endeavour had sailed as far to the south as the sixtieth degree of south latitude. On her course north-westwards into the Pacific the ship was brought to a standstill occasionally whilst Mr. Banks went out in a boat to shoot sea birds, principally albatrosses. These were thought by Cook to be larger than those of the Atlantic Ocean. One of them measured 10 feet 2 inches from the tip of one wing to that of the other. Their bodies, after being carefully skinned, were soaked in salt water, parboiled also in sea water, and finally stood in a very little fresh water (the phrase "very little" shows how necessary it was in those days to be avaricious of the store of fresh water). After this they were served up to table with a savoury sauce, and the dish was universally commended. It was in any case a grateful variation from the constant round of salt beef and salt pork. Another inhabitant of these south Pacific seas which aroused great interest was a large octopus or cuttlefish, apparently just killed by albatrosses, and floating in a mangled condition upon the water. Banks noticed that it was very different from the cuttlefishes found in European seas, for its immense arms were furnished, instead of suckers, with a double row of very sharp talons which resembled the claws of a cat, and like them were retractable into a sheath, from which they could be thrust out at pleasure. "Of this cuttlefish we made one of the best soups we had ever tasted."

On 24 March, 1769, they noticed a log of wood passing by the ship, and the sea, which was rough, became suddenly as smooth as a millpond, so that they were probably passing by the vicinity of some undiscovered island.

On 4 April, 1769, land was sighted and was discovered to be an island of an oval form, with a lagoon in the middle, which occupied much the larger part of it. The border of land circumscribing the lagoon was in many places low and narrow, consisting chiefly of a reef or beach of rocks; in other words, it was one of the coralline atolls described on p. 21, and as usual possessed coconut palms. It was inhabited by tall, copper-coloured natives, with long, black hair, whose heads seemed to be remarkably large, probably because of some cap or headdress. Eleven of them walked along the beach abreast of the ship, with poles or pikes in their hands which reached twice as high as themselves. As they so walked they were without clothing; but after the ship had drawn off from the island it was seen that they covered themselves with some light-coloured material. To Cook and his mariners, who for a long time had seen nothing but water and sky, except the cold hills of Tierra del Fuego, these coconut groves of Lagoon Island in tropical latitudes seemed a terrestrial paradise.

The following day they passed another atoll, shaped exactly like a bow, the arc and cord being land, and the space between them water, that part answering to the arc of the bow being about 200 yards wide, 12 or more miles long, and fairly well covered with trees, while the straight, low beach answering to the bowstring was a long strip of coral rocks, through which there were openings connecting the lagoon with the sea. This island, like similar ones which they sailed by in the succeeding days, was inhabited by Polynesians of the usual type, brown-skinned, naked, tall, well-made, and with abundance of black hair; but in some cases this bushed out from the head, showing that the people were not without some Melanesian blood. They seemed to be armed with wooden weapons, one of them a slender pole with a knob at the end, and another a paddle, which might be used for striking or stabbing or for navigating a canoe. The canoes these people had possessed sails.

Passing by Osnaburg Island, already discovered by Captain Wallis, Cook reached Tahiti (which at once struck them in its difference from the atoll islands by being high and mountainous) on 12 April, 1769. Before even he could get near the shore his ship was surrounded by canoes, in which there were bunches of bananas and branches of a tree, which it was the custom of these people to wave as a token of peace and amity. By signs they expressed the wish that these branches should be stuck amongst the rigging of the ship as a sign that they would be received with friendliness. This having been done, the canoes approached the ship close enough to hand their cargoes of coconuts, bananas, and other fruit on board, where it was eagerly purchased by the sailors, being extremely acceptable after their long privation from such additions to their diet. The next day the ship came to an anchor in Port Royal Bay (Matavai). Here the first thing that attracted their attention, when the natives came off to trade, was the bread-fruit.[73]

Before anyone from the Endeavour was allowed to land at Tahiti, Cook wisely drew up rules to guide the relations of the seamen and officers with the natives, in order as far as possible to avoid provoking quarrels with them, or enabling the latter to acquire weapons which might be turned against the white men. Landing himself, with Banks and Dr. Solander, a party of armed seamen, and a native of Tahiti, who had come off to the ship and constituted himself their guide, he noticed that the Polynesian people were so awestruck that the first who approached them almost came creeping on his hands and knees. Leafy boughs having been offered in token of peace, the Englishmen likewise broke off green branches and held them in their hands, and, the whole party having marched to a place where there was a freshwater spring and where the ground was clean and bare, green boughs were dropped by both sides in a regular heap, and after that relations between them became much less formal, especially after Cook's party had distributed beads and other small presents. They walked for about 5 miles through groves of trees loaded with coconuts and bread-fruit, and offering the most grateful shade. Under the trees were the houses of the natives, most of them being only a roof without walls, and the whole scene realizing "the poetical fables of Arcadia".

The next day canoes came out to the Endeavour evidently filled with people of superior rank. Two of these chiefs came on board and selected Cook and Banks to be their special friends, carrying out this ceremony by taking off most of their clothing and putting it about the shoulders of the Englishmen. Return presents were given to them, and after a long row in the boats of the Endeavour the notabilities of that ship accompanying their Tahitian friends landed and went to a house of much greater length and size than any they had yet seen. Here was found a chief by the name of Tutaha, who presented them with a cock and hen and pieces of perfumed bark cloth. In other houses they met the women, who received them with such extravagant demonstrations of affection that they were embarrassed. Soon afterwards another chief gave them a meal, which they ate with the greatest heartiness. It consisted of fish, bread-fruit, coconut, and bananas, cooked after the native fashion. They were enjoying this meal, though perhaps not quite so much the affectionate attentions of the native ladies (who kept plying them with coconut milk), when suddenly two of the officers complained that their pockets had been picked—a complaint, one would think, under the circumstances, they might have waived on such an occasion. However, Dr. Solander lost an opera glass, and Mr. Monkhouse, a surgeon, his snuff box.

Complaint was at once made to the chief, and Banks somewhat aggressively jumped to his feet and struck the butt end of his gun on the ground. Immediately all the natives fled in a panic, with the exception of two or three chiefs and their wives. The principal personage amongst these at once took Mr. Banks by the hand and led him to a large quantity of cloth which lay at the other end of the house, offering it to him piece by piece, and intimating by signs that if that would atone for the wrong which had been done he might take all he saw. But this compensation was refused, and eventually the chief, after being absent for some time, returned with the missing snuff box and the case of the opera glass. This, however, upon being opened, was found to be empty. Whereupon the chief, catching Mr. Banks by the hand, led him rapidly along the shore for a mile or more, till he reached a house from which a woman came out and gave him a piece of cloth, which he hastily took from her and continued to press forward. Banks had been followed by Dr. Solander and Surgeon Monkhouse, and at last the whole party came to a place where they were received by a woman to whom the chief presented the piece of cloth and to whom the Englishmen gave a few beads. The beads and cloth being deposited on the floor, the woman went out, and in about half an hour she returned with the opera glass, and expressing the same joy as was now shown by the chief. She also returned the beads and the cloth, refusing to accept them.

The next day the chiefs came off to the ship with pigs, bread-fruit, and other provisions, for which they received suitable return presents of hatchets and linen. Cook then established an encampment on shore, but their pleasant relations with the natives were temporarily spoilt by the petulance of a midshipman named Monkhouse (not to be confused with the surgeon of that name) commanding one of the landing parties. A Tahitian had snatched away the musket of one of the marines. Whereupon this midshipman ordered his men to fire into the thickest of the crowd, afterwards pursuing the thief and shooting him dead. However, thanks to the chiefs Tuburai, Tamaide, and Tutaha, peace was made and intercourse soon resumed without much restraint. The body of the man who had been shot in the encampment was found to be wrapped in cloth and placed on a bier supported by stakes under a roof, where it would be allowed to decay with a terrible stench until at last it was nothing but a dry skeleton.

Charming as life was in many respects on this Pacific island there was one pest which at times proved almost unendurable—apparently none other than the common house fly, which existed in such enormous numbers that it was an incessant torment during daylight. If one of the draughtsmen attached to the expedition attempted to make a water-colour study of any object, the flies would settle on his paper so thickly that no part of its surface could be seen, and eat the colour up as fast as he could lay it on. [It will be remembered that Tasman noted the same plague of flies in the Tonga archipelago.]

The principal personage of Tahiti seemed to be a queen, whose name was Oberea, about forty years of age, almost white-skinned, but now very stout, though with evidence of great beauty at an earlier age. There were several men chiefs of importance in the main island, and something like an aristocracy. This "nobility" had faces of a more Caucasian character and a taller stature than the common people, who were many of them in the position of serfs.

The Tahitians believed in numerous gods, one of which was supreme over the rest. They also had priests called tahawa, who were the "wise men" of the land, possessing more knowledge of navigation, astronomy, and medicine than the others. They believed vaguely in a life after death, and their dead were disposed of usually (in all but cases of worthless slaves) in the following manner (I quote from Banks):—

"I found the shed under which the body lay, close by the house in which the man resided when he was alive, some other houses being not more than 10 yards distant. The shed was about 15 feet long, and 11 broad, and of a proportionate height: one end was wholly open, and the other end and the two sides, were partly enclosed with a kind of wicker work. The bier on which the corpse was deposited, was a frame of wood ... with a matted bottom, and supported by four posts, at the height of about 5 feet from the ground. The body was covered first with a mat, and then with white cloth; by the side of it lay a wooden mace, one of their weapons of war, and near the head of it, which lay next to the close end of the shed, lay two coconut shells, such as are sometimes used to carry water in; at the other end a bunch of green leaves, with some dried twigs, all tied together, were stuck in the ground, by which lay a stone about as big as a coconut: near these lay one of the young plantain trees, which are used for emblems of peace, and close by it a stone axe. At the open end of the shed also hung, in several strings, a great number of palm nuts, and without the shed, was stuck upright in the ground, the stem of a plantain tree about 5 feet high, upon the top of which was placed a coconut shell full of fresh water; against the side of one of the posts hung a small bag, containing a few pieces of bread-fruit ready roasted."

The emotions of the Tahitians were easily excited. Both men and women readily gave way to tears, and would fly into hysterical rages in which they struck their heads several times with sharks' teeth, so that a profusion of blood often followed. A woman who acted thus owing to some trifling affair which had piqued her, after her bleeding was over looked up with a smile, ceased her loud, doleful talking, collected the pieces of blood-stained cloth with which she had dabbed her head and neck, and threw them into the sea. Then she plunged herself into a river, washed her whole body, and returned to the encampment as gay and cheerful as if nothing had happened.

Cook was greatly struck with the stature of the men and with the beautiful shape of their bodies. One man coming from a small outlying island measured nearly 6 feet 4 inches. The women of the better class were in general taller than English women. On the other hand, those of the more serf-like people were not only below the average stature of Europeans but even quite dwarf-like. Occasionally albinos made their appearance with skins of a dead white, red eyes, and white hair. As to their tatuing, the Tahitians pricked the skin, so as just to fetch blood, with a small instrument something in the form of a hoe, with a blade made of bone or shell scraped very thin, and from ¼ inch to 1½ inches wide. The edge of this was cut into sharp teeth, and when about to be used the teeth of the hoe were dipped into a black paste made from the soot from an oily nut—a nut which the natives burnt in lieu of candles. Having been dipped into this mixture and pressed into the skin, the top of the hoe would be struck a smart blow with a stick, so that it punctured the skin and left behind an indelible black stain. The operation was painful and it took some days before the wounds were healed.

Cook expatiates on the personal cleanliness of the Tahitians, who constantly washed the whole of the body in running water perhaps three times a day. After every meal their mouth and hands were washed, and their clothes as well as their persons were kept without spot or stain, "so that in a large company of these people nothing is suffered but heat, which, perhaps, is more than can be said of the politest assembly in Europe". For in Cook's day—and, indeed, for nearly one hundred years later—civilized Europeans (to say nothing of the working classes, who were most uncleanly) very seldom washed their bodies. Tahitian clothing consisted of bark cloth or matting of different kinds. The bark cloth would not bear wetting, so it was only worn in dry weather and exchanged for matting when it came on to rain. None of the materials of their dress were sewn. Their clothes consisted of long strips of bark cloth or matting, which would be draped about the body, principaly round the waist. Large pieces were worn loosely over the shoulders in the manner of a cloak, or allowed to fall about the limbs like loose trousers. In the heat of the day clothing was mostly reduced to a scanty petticoat for the women and a sash for the men. To shade their faces from the sun they sometimes wore bonnets made of matting or coconut fronds. These they would plait together in a few minutes. The women also wore little turbans of cloth, and sometimes a very elaborate dress made of plaited human hair. Of this material Sir Joseph Banks brought away with him pieces that were over a mile in length, apparently without a knot. They would wind these strips of hair (like silk) round and round the head, and thus produce a very pretty effect. Amongst these threads they stuck flowers of various kinds. The men would thrust the pinkish tail-feathers of the Tropic-bird upright into the bunch of hair on the top of their head, or wear whimsical garlands of flowers or scarlet seeds, or wigs made of dogs' hair, or men's hair, or coconut matting. Ear-rings made of shells, stones, berries, seeds, or small pearls were also worn.

The only domestic animals of Tahiti were pigs, dogs, and fowls, but the natives also ate wild ducks, which were plentiful. Cannibalism did not exist in this archipelago, though there were traces of it in the religious customs.

Their manner of executing and cooking dogs, which they bred for eating, was as follows: The man who performed the double office of butcher and cook killed the dog by holding his hand over the dog's mouth and nose. In about a quarter of an hour the animal was stifled. Whilst this was being done someone else was digging a hole in the ground about a foot deep, in which the fire was kindled. On top of the fire were placed stones to be heated. The dog was then singed by being held over the fire, and scraped with a shell. Thus all the hair was taken off. The entrails were removed, and the body was cut up with a sharp shell. The entrails, after being carefully washed in sea water, were put into coconut shells, together with all the blood which had been collected from the body. When the oven in the ground had been sufficiently heated the fire was taken out, and some of the stones which were not hot enough to burn anything were placed at the bottom and covered with green leaves. The cut-up dog, together with its entrails, was then placed on these leaves, and other leaves were laid on top. The hole was afterwards covered with the remainder of the hot stones, on which earth was heaped. In about four hours this oven was opened, and the dog's meat taken out, "excellently baked, so that we all agreed he made a very good dish". The dogs which were bred in Tahiti for food were kept wholly on a vegetable diet—bread-fruit, coconuts, and yams.

The principal vegetable foods of the natives of the island of Tahiti were bread-fruit, coconuts, bananas of thirteen sorts, and the long banana which is known by the name of plantain; then there were a fruit not unlike an apple, which when ripe was very pleasant; another resembling a nectarine, and called ahiya; sweet potatoes, dioscorea yams, koko or taro yams (an aroid); a fruit known by the name of jambu, and reckoned most delicious; sugar cane; a root called by the inhabitants pea; a plant called ethe, of which the root only was eaten; a fruit like a large kidney-bean, grown in a pod and tasting like a chestnut after being roasted, called by the natives ahi; the fruits of the pandanus; the morinda fruit; a kind of bracken fern, of which not only the root but the leaves were sometimes eaten; and a plant called theve, which had an edible root. There was also in the island the paper-mulberry tree (the range of which extends from China to Polynesia), and several fig trees, some of which, with their enormously extended aerial roots and branches, covered an area of 60 square feet. This mulberry and most of the figs provided bast which was made into cloth.

Bread-fruit was sometimes turned into a delicious dish by mixing its farinaceous pulp with coconut milk, with pounded bananas, or with a paste made of the mahi fruit. This mahi was gathered just before it became ripe, and, being laid in heaps, was closely covered with leaves. In this state it fermented and became disagreeably sweet. After pulling out the core from the rotten fruit the rest was thrown into a hole neatly lined with grass. The hole having been covered with stones, the fruit then underwent fermentation and became sour. After that it was wrapped up in leaves and baked, and, both cooked and uncooked, would keep for weeks. It was eaten hot or cold, and the natives seldom made a meal without it, though its taste to Europeans was "as disagreeable as that of a pickled olive". Salt water was the universal sauce to their food, no meal being eaten without it, so much so that the natives who lived at a great distance from the seacoast had to keep sea water in segments of bamboos like tubes. A kind of butter was also made of coconut kernels flavoured with salt water, which at first tasted to the Europeans nauseous and rancid, but afterwards grew so much in favour with them that they preferred it to the sauces they had brought out from England.

The Tahitians possessed no narcotic like opium, betel, or tobacco, and at first Cook thought that they knew no intoxicant. But he afterwards found that they were able to get drunk on the juice of a plant called ava ava (the well-known kava pepper vine, referred to on p. 64). But the vice of drunkenness was almost confined to the chiefs and the nobility, and was forbidden to the women.

Banks gives the following interesting description of how a Tahitian gentleman would eat a meal:—

"He sits down under the shade of a tree, or on the shady side of his house, and a large quantity of leaves, either of the bread-fruit or banana, are neatly spread before him upon the ground as a tablecloth. A basket is then set by him that contains his provision, which, if fish and flesh, is ready dressed and wrapped up in leaves, and two coconut shells, one full of salt water and the other of fresh. His attendants, who are not few, seat themselves round him, and when all is ready he begins washing his hands and his mouth thoroughly with the fresh water, and this he repeats almost continually throughout the whole meal; he then takes part of his provision out of the basket, which generally consists of a small fish or two, two or three bread-fruits, fourteen or fifteen ripe bananas, or six or seven 'apples'. He first takes half a bread-fruit, peels off the rind, and takes out the core with his nails; of this he puts as much into his mouth as it can hold, and while he chews it takes the fish out of the leaves and breaks one of them into the salt water, placing the other, and what remains of the bread-fruit, upon the leaves that have been spread before him. When this is done he takes up a small piece of the fish that has been broken into the salt water, with all the fingers of one hand, and sucks it into his mouth, so as to get with it as much of the salt water as possible: in the same manner he takes the rest by different morsels, and between them, at least very frequently, takes a small sup of the salt water, either out of the coconut shell or the palm of his hand: in the meantime one of his attendants has prepared a young coconut, by peeling off the outer rind with his teeth, an operation which to a European appears very surprising, but it depends so much upon sleight that many of us were able to do it before we left the island.... The master, when he chooses to drink, takes the coconut thus prepared and, boring a hole through the shell with his finger, or breaking it with a stone, he sucks out the liquor. When he has eaten his bread-fruit and fish he begins with his plantains, one of which makes but a mouthful, though it be as big as a black pudding; if instead of plantains he has 'apples', he never tastes them till they have been pared. To do this a shell is picked up from the ground, where they are always in plenty, and tossed to him by an attendant: he immediately begins to cut or scrape off the rind, but so awkwardly that great part of the fruit is wasted. If, instead of fish, he has flesh, he must have something like a knife to divide it; and for this purpose a piece of bamboo is tossed to him, of which he makes the necessary implement by splitting it transversely with his nail. While all this has been doing, some of his attendants have been employed in beating bread-fruit with a stone pestle upon a block of wood; by being beaten in this manner, and sprinkled from time to time with water, it is reduced to the consistence of a soft paste, and is then put into a vessel somewhat like a butcher's tray, and either made up alone or mixed with banana or mahi sauce, according to the taste of the master, by pouring water upon it by degrees and squeezing it often through the hand. Under this operation it acquires the consistence of a thick custard, and, a large coconut shell full of it being set before him, he sips it as we should do a jelly if we had no spoon to take it from the glass. The meal is then finished by again washing his hands and his mouth, after which the coconut shells are cleaned, and everything that is left is replaced in the basket."

The Tahitian dances were often of an elaborate character; but some of them of an immodest nature. The people were very fond of music, and had a great sense of rhythm. Their musical instruments were chiefly drums and flutes.

The Tahiti drum was made of a hollow block of wood, solid at one end and covered at the other with sharks' skin. This was beaten by the hand and not with a stick. The flutes upon which the people played had only two stops, and therefore could not sound more than four notes by half-tones. They were not applied to the mouth, but were blown into from one nostril whilst the other was stopped with the performer's thumb. Nevertheless, to the music of these instruments four people would sing in concert, keeping very good time. They also had an expedient for bringing flutes that were played together into unison by rolling a leaf over the end of the shortest, like a sliding tube, moved up or down till they were certain that the playing was in tune, a fact of which they judged with much nicety of ear. They were very fond of singing couplets, especially after dark, to amuse themselves before going to sleep. Their language was a melodious Polynesian dialect, but, being deficient in several consonants, the native rendering of the names of officers and men of the Endeavour was quaintly imperfect. Cook was called Toot. The sailing-master, Mr. Molineux, had a name which they did not attempt to pronounce, so in preference they called him Boba, from his Christian name, Bob (Robert). Gore was turned into Toarro; Solander became Torano; Banks, Tapane; and Petersgill, Petrodero.

The Tahitian houses of the better sort were usually built, on a raised clay platform, of bamboo poles and palm thatch or matting. The furniture inside was very simple—little else than mats on the floor. No pottery was required, coconut shells and calabashes taking its place. The houses, when necessary, were lit up at night-time by the kernels of an oily nut, which they stuck on a wooden skewer one over the other. These candles burnt a considerable time, and gave a very tolerable light.

These Polynesians of Tahiti, as elsewhere in Oceania, were still living in the "Stone Age" when Cook visited them, but they had already learnt the value of iron from the previous visits of Bougainville and Wallis, and were very keen to obtain iron from the crew of the Endeavour. Previous to their intercourse with Europeans, fish hooks were made of mother-of-pearl, or some other hard shell, filed into shape with pieces of coral, drilled with holes by sharp-pointed stones, fixed into the end of a piece of bamboo, which was then rotated between the hands. Coral rock made excellent files for this and other industries. Their axes and adzes were derived chiefly from basaltic volcanic stone. The skin of a sting-ray[74] with its rough tubercles, and used with coral sand, made a fricative for polishing or rubbing down stone surfaces. With their stone axes they were able to fell trees, and, what is more, to split the trunk into planks from 3 to 4 inches thick, the whole length and breadth of the tree, though some of these trees were 8 feet thick and 40 feet long. They would smooth planks very expeditiously with their adzes, and take off a thin shaving from a plank without missing a stroke.

Their small canoes for short excursions were flat-bottomed and with upright sides, but the pahi, used for long voyages, was bowed and with a sharp keel. The flat-bottomed boats, called ivaha, were sometimes united at a distance of about 3 feet by a strong pole of wood laid across them and lashed to the gunwales. On the fore part of these double canoes a stage or platform was raised, rather wider than the boat itself, and upon this stage would stand the fighting men, whose missile weapons were slings and spears. Below these stages sat the men who paddled the canoe, and who furnished reinforcements to replace those who were wounded. Some of the fighting canoes were 40 feet long, and their sterns might be as much as 18 feet above the surface of the water. The pahi, or long-distance boat, was sometimes as much as 60 feet long, but very narrow. If intended for warfare it would be fitted with a stage or platform, or for long-distance journeys contain a house. It was steadied with one outrigger projecting 6 to 10 feet, and might have one or even two masts carrying sails that were made of matting.

After discovering and exploring the rest of the Society Islands to the north-west of Tahiti, which is an outlying member of the group, Cook directed the course of the Endeavour southwards in search of land; but finding none, except the minute inhabited island of Oheteroa (where the people were lusty and well made and clothed in beautiful bark-cloths painted in stripes of different patterns and colours, and armed with wooden weapons, sometimes pointed with the sharp bone of the sting-ray), he turned his course more to the west, and after sailing from 15 August, 1769, to 6 October, land was sighted on the latter date and became the subject of much eager conversation, it being believed that at last they had found "the unknown Southern land" (Terra Australis Incognita).[75]

On Sunday, 8 October, 1769, the ship was at anchor in Poverty Bay, off the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand; and Captain Cook, accompanied by (Sir Joseph) Banks and Dr. Solander, and a party of marines, landed—the first amongst Europeans—on the shores of New Zealand. Their reception from the natives was not a friendly one. When they had got some distance from the boat, four men armed with long wooden lances rushed out of the woods and attempted to attack the seamen who were left in the boat. The coxswain of the small pinnace was obliged to fire in the air to scare them. This, however, did not deter the Maoris, who renewed their attack, and at last one of them was shot dead. At this the other three stood motionless, as if petrified with astonishment; but as soon as they recovered their senses they seized the body of their dead companion to drag it after them, but abandoned it at last in a panic flight. Cook and his party returned to the ship, and heard the natives on shore discussing in loud voices what had happened. The next morning Cook, accompanied by Banks, Solander, and the interpreter, Tupia, landed and advanced slowly and quietly towards a party of fifty natives who were seated on the ground, every man of whom at their approach produced either a long wooden pike or a small axe of green jade, about a foot long and thick enough to weigh 4 or 5 pounds. The interpreter, Tupia, called to them aloud in the language of Tahiti, but they only answered by flourishing their weapons. Then a musket was fired wide, so as to scare them whilst the party retreated. A body of marines was landed, and marched with a union jack carried before them to a little bank. The officers once more approached the Maoris, and it was with great pleasure they perceived that their Tahiti interpreter was actually understood when he spoke, he and the Maoris only speaking different dialects of the same language. (This was a very remarkable fact, that the Maoris could understand the speech of other Polynesian natives from 1000 to 2000 miles distant, for the two peoples must have been separated in time by about six or seven hundred years.)

THE ISLAND OF TAHITI AND ITS EXTRAORDINARY DOUBLE CANOES: AS SEEN BY CAPTAIN COOK