[2] At this stage it may assist the reader if I give in a footnote the principal geographic divisions of Australasia.

Beginning on the west there is Malaysia, a term which comprises all the islands of the Malay Archipelago up to the vicinity of New Guinea. New Guinea and the islands and archipelagoes near it constitute the region of Papuasia; south of Papuasia is Australia (including Tasmania, Lord Howe, and Norfolk Islands, and perhaps New Caledonia); to the south-east of Australia lies New Zealand, which dominion comprises naturally and politically the Kermadec islets, the Chatham Islands and Macquarie Island; Melanesia is the domain of the dark-skinned people who are half-Papuan and half-Polynesian, and is generally held to include the Solomon Islands, the Santa Cruz, and New Hebrides archipelagoes, and the Fiji group. All the foregoing (together with the Samoa and Tonga Islands) were once connected by land with each other and with the continent of Asia.

North of Papuasia is the division of small islands known as Micronesia; it includes the Gilbert, Marshall, Caroline, and Ladrone archipelagoes. Almost in the middle of the northern half of the Pacific is the isolated ridge or shelf from which rises the Hawaii or Sandwich Islands, two of which are rather large (for Pacific islands). The Hawaii group is quite distinct from any other, and has never been joined to a continent. Finally, there remains the division of Polynesia, which likewise, in all probability, has never been continental, and which includes the separate archipelagoes of Marquezas, Tuamotu, Tubuai, Tahiti (the Society Islands), the Palmyra, Phoenix, and Malden groups, and the remote Easter Island, only 2374 miles from South America. The term "Polynesia" often covers the Samoa and the Tonga Islands, because they are peopled by the Polynesian race; but these groups are in other respects part of Melanesia. Finally, Oceania is a convenient term for all the islands, including New Guinea and New Zealand, which lie to the east of Malaysia, to the north and east of Australia.

[3] A tree in appearance like a conifer, but in reality belonging to an isolated and very peculiar sub-class of flowering plants, distantly akin to oaks and catkin-bearing trees.

[4] The real opossums are only found in America. Phalangers are woolly haired lemur-like marsupials, living in trees, which have their thumb and big toe opposite the other digits for grasping, besides a tail with a prehensile tip. In the arrangement of their teeth they are distantly related to kangaroos, which are really only phalangers, whose far-back ancestors have taken to a life on the ground.

[5] A specimen 33 feet long has been recorded.

[6] The New Guinea mountains are the highest in Australasia, higher than any land between the Himalayas and the Andes. They rise to over 16,000 feet in the west of New Guinea, and nearly 14,000 feet in the east. High mountains are common features on the great Malay islands. They rise to over 10,000 feet in Celebes and the Philippines, to 13,700 feet in North Borneo, and to altitudes of over 11,000 feet in Java and nearly as high in Timor.

[7] See p. 241.

[8] And since the discovery of Australasia began, a sustenance for shipwrecked mariners

[9] The Dugong, very commonly met with in the early stories of Australasian adventure, is an aquatic mammal, the size of a large porpoise, which belongs to the order of the Sirenians. It frequents the shores of estuaries and seacoasts with plenty of seaweed. It is a vegetable feeder only. See p. 165.

[10] Dr. W.E. Roth, writing to the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1908, describes the existing canoes on the northern and eastern coasts of Australia as being of two kinds: that which was made from a single sheet of bark, folded in its length and tied at the extremities (the sides being kept apart by primitive stretchers), and that which was hollowed by fire and stone axe from the trunk of a tree. But he implies by his further remarks that these "dug-out" canoes were originally obtained by the black Australians from the Melanesian or Negroid people of Papuasia, who are several degrees higher in mental development than the Australoids. He also alludes to rafts possessed by the northern and eastern Australians (the Tasmanians had somewhat similar ones), made of logs of white mangrove tied together at both ends, but in such a way that the rafts were narrower at one end than at the other. On top was placed some seaweed to form a cushion to sit on. These are propelled either like punts by means of a long pole, or are paddled with flattened stumps of mangrove or similar trees from the water side. In the tropical regions natives will make a rough-and-ready raft out of three trunks of the wild banana tied together with rattans or flexible canes.

[11] It is more convenient to give this name to the dark-skinned Australian aborigines, inasmuch as the term "Australian" now means a white man of European ancestry.

[12] The Tasmanians have been extinct since 1876 or 1877.

[13] Here being dwarfish in stature they are styled Negrito, a Spanish diminutive of Negro. The pigmy negro type is not confined to the Philippine archipelago, but reappears in some of the south-eastern Malay islands and in New Guinea.

[14] The seafaring vessels of the Polynesians were as much of an advance on the dug-out canoes of the negroid Papuans as these last were superior to the rafts and bark coracles of the Australoids. The chief feature in the Polynesian canoe was the outrigger, sometimes double. This was a long piece of wood floating on the water parallel to the canoe and fastened to two poles or sticks projecting horizontally from the side of the canoe.

[15] There are legends and evidence—such as shell heaps—in New Zealand indicating that the islands were first populated by a Papuan race akin to the peoples of New Caledonia and New Guinea. This is difficult of belief because of the isolated character of New Zealand and the exceedingly stormy seas which cut it off from other lands to the north and west. Yet the existence of a negroid element among the Maoris of New Zealand is undoubted. It may have been due to the earliest Polynesian invaders bringing with them slaves and captives from Fiji. That the Maoris kept slightly in touch with the world of Asia after their colonization of New Zealand is shown by the discovery some years ago in the interior of New Zealand of an Indian bronze bell dating from about the fourteenth century A.C., with an inscription on it in the Tamil language of southern India. It was a ship's bell belonging to a vessel presumably manned by Muhammadans, probably Malays. Either, therefore, a Malay ship or one from the south of India discovered New Zealand some six hundred years ago, or reached the Melanesian or Samoan islands of the western Pacific, and there left its bell to be carried off to New Zealand as a treasure. The Malays certainly traded to the New Hebrides. It should also be noted that in many other outlying Pacific islands besides New Zealand, there are traditions and even the remains of implements to suggest a former wide migration eastward of the Negroid type—even as far as Hawaii.

[16] Indonesian is the name applied to the light-skinned people of Caucasian features found in Sumatra and Papuasia.

[17] The domestic fowl had even reached New Caledonia but not any part of Australia or New Zealand.

[18] In my volume on the Pioneers in India and Southern Asia I have referred to the story told to Ludovico di Varthema by a Malay captain of the vessel in which he travelled, according to which Malays had penetrated southwards into seas where the ice obstructed their passage, and the day in wintertime became shortened to a period of four hours. This would look as though the Malays had anticipated us in Antarctic discovery.

The names of the French voyagers who may have sighted Australia in the first half of the sixteenth century were Binot Paulmier de Gonneville, who, sailing across the Indian Ocean after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, was blown out of his course and landed on the shores of a great island, which he believed to be Terra Australis (perhaps only Madagaskar); and Guillaume le Testu, who, starting apparently from Marseilles in 1530, also rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and in directing his course for the Spice Islands apparently stumbled on the coast of West Australia. The southern continent is certainly indicated on an old French map of 1542, now in the possession of the British Museum. But this discovery of the ProvenÇal sailor is based on slender evidence.

[19] This word is derived from two Greek roots meaning "Black Islanders". There is much difficulty in deciding what is Papuan and what Melanesian when classifying the peoples of the Solomon Islands and Bismarck Archipelago. There is a strong infusion of Melanesian blood in Hawaii.

[20] The Bread-fruit, which will often be referred to in these pages, is a tree of moderate height (Artocarpus incisa). With its near relative, the Jack fruit, it is a member of the Mulberry order, and consequently a distant relation of the figs. Dampier gives the following description of the Bread-fruit of the Pacific Islands: "It grows on a large tree as big and as high as our largest apple trees. It has a spreading head full of branches, and dark leaves. The fruit grows on the boughs like apples; it is as big as a penny loaf ... of a round shape, and has a thick, tough rind. When the fruit is ripe it is yellow and soft, and the taste is sweet and pleasant. The natives of this island (Guam) use it for bread; they gather it when full grown, while it is green and hard; then they bake it in an oven, which scorches the rind and makes it black: they scrape off the outside black crust and there remains a tender thin crust, and the inside is soft, tender, and white, like the crumb of a penny loaf. There is neither seed nor stone in the inside, but it is of a pure white substance like bread. It must be eaten new, for if it is kept above twenty-four hours it becomes dry, harsh, and choky ... this fruit lasts in season for eight months in the year." Mr. John Masefield, who has edited the best and the most recent edition of Dampier, compares the flavour of Bread-fruit to "apple sauce".

[21] Holothurians, a starfish-like creature, called in commerce bÊche de mer.

[22] The "totem" system is explained in my work on the Pioneers of Canada. The totem was some animal, plant, or natural object chosen as the imaginary ancestor or symbol of the clan.

[23] "Neolithic" means the age or stage of highly finished stone weapons and implements, "PalÆolithic" refers to an earlier period when the stones were very roughly shaped, and "Eolithic" means the very dawn of culture, when the stones were merely broken fragments, not artificially shaped at all.

[24] The geographical term, Moluccas, now includes the very large island of Jilolo, Bachian, Buru, Ceram, &c.

[25] Pioneers in India, &c.

[26] The San Antonio (which deserted the expedition in South America), the Trinidad (after a fruitless voyage out into the Pacific and back to the Moluccas, seized and dismantled by the Portuguese), the Santiago (lost on the coast of Patagonia), the Conception (broken up in the Philippines), and the Victoria, which ultimately returned to Seville in 1522.

[27] Magellan first gave to the Ladrone Islands the name of Islands of Sails, on account of the many vessels with sails which he observed in that neighbourhood, showing how firmly established among the Polynesians and Micronesians was the use of the sail in their navigation, a fact which explains the success of their voyages over enormous sea distances.

[28] They were similar to the prahus or praus of Malaysia, which did not turn round, but sailed backwards and forwards, the sharp stem being exactly like the sharp stern. Most of the prahus had outriggers, and in all the leeside of the vessel was flat and perpendicular while the weatherside was rounded. The mast carried a large triangular-shaped sail.

[29] They were not called the Philippines until 1543, or thereabouts.

[30] See p. 97.

[31] They told Magellan that they worshipped nothing, but that they believed in a god called Abba, who lived in the sky, and to him they raised their faces and their clasped hands when anxious to appeal to him.

[32] The queen was young and beautiful, and entirely covered with a white and black cloth. Her mouth and nails were stained very red, while on her head she wore a large hat of palm leaves, like a tiara.

[33] One of these was the celebrated Duarte Barbosa, commander of the Trinidad, whose book on his travels in India and Further India is much quoted by me in Pioneers in India, &c.

[34] Some of these (including the women) were set free in the Moluccas, others died on the voyage, but a few actually did reach Seville, and with one exception, after being carefully instructed in Christianity and the Spanish language, were sent back to the Philippines in 1527. The exception was a Malay who showed himself so extraordinarily clever about money matters and trade that the Spaniards feared if he returned to the Far East he might be a little too knowing in appraising the value of European trade goods. So he apparently ended his days in Spain.

[35] The camphor of Malaysia is a crystalline secretion found in the crevices of the bark of a magnificent tree, the Dryobalanops aromatica. The camphor more commonly met with in commerce is derived from the bark of a kind of laurel growing in Japan and Formosa. Myrobalans are the fruit of a tall Terminalia tree of the CombretaceÆ family. They are plum-like in appearance and very astringent. The kernels are eaten, but the rind is used for making ink and very dark dyes.

[36] These were no doubt examples of the genus Phyllum, insects of the PhasmidÆ family (allied to Mantises). The resemblance to leaves in the Phylli is extraordinary, especially in the female insect, even the egg capsules are just like seeds.

[37] The appearances, of course, were nothing but the displays of electricity which in violent storms show themselves like white globes of flame or torches in the upper parts of the masts and rigging, and are known generally as "corposants" or St. Elmo's Fires.

[38] He pronounced the name Jailolo. This large island, which in shape is an extraordinary repetition on a smaller scale of the still larger Celebes, is also known as Halmahera.

[39] They may have been the Standard-bearer Paradise Bird (Semioptera), from the Island of Jilolo, which is fawn colour, with blue and emerald gorget, and large waving plume feathers rising up from the quills of the wings.

[40] Fifty-three Spaniards remained behind in Tidore with the Trinidad, but of these only five returned to Europe. These five included the captain, Gomez Espinosa, already mentioned, and a German gunner, Hans Warge. Many of the Spaniards died in Tidore from various diseases or were killed in quarrels with the natives. The Trinidad attempted to sail for Spain back across the Pacific Ocean, but pursued a northern route which took her to the forty-second degree of north latitude, whence she was driven back by storms to some island near New Guinea. Here she was found by the Portuguese, who stripped and abandoned her, conveying the survivors of her crew as prisoners to the Moluccas, where they were treated with considerable harshness.

[41] Called, by Pigafetta, Malina, probably the Island of Ombay.

[42] The Solomon Islands are now divided politically between Germany and Britain, Germany having annexed the large island of Bougainville and the smaller Buka on the north, and Great Britain the remainder. The islands are very mountainous and volcanic, and on the largest, Bougainville, one mountain rises to an altitude of over 10,000 feet. In the British Island of Guadalcanal there is an altitude of 8000 feet. The climate is very wet and unhealthy, and vegetation is luxurious, including magnificent forests of sandalwood, ebony, and "lignum vitÆ" (a kind of Myrtle—Metrosideron). The inhabitants belong mainly to the Melanesian or Negroid stock, and are no doubt closely related to the Papuans of New Guinea. In some of the northern islands, such as Buka, the people often present a striking resemblance in their features, skin colour, and close-growing, woolly hair, to African Negroes. Some tribes in the islands, however, are akin to the Polynesians, and have long, straight hair. They were until quite recently the most ferocious cannibals of any part of the globe. In more remote periods this archipelago was connected with New Guinea, and thence derived the ancestors of its present wild animals, which include numerous Bats of very interesting types, some very large Rats the size of big rabbits, a Cuscus or marsupial Phalanger, and a large Frog about 8 inches long, besides some remarkable Parrots.

[43] Sometimes known as Marina. The name as given by de Quiros seems to have been spelt "Austrialia".

[44] As a matter of fact, the Spanish really only acquired something like mastery over the Philippine Islands at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Up till that time the islands were mostly governed by native chiefs, who paid tribute to Spain, and submitted very willingly to the direction of the Spanish friars or missionary brethren, who acquired considerable influence over the northern part of the Philippine archipelago, where Muhammadanism was not in any way established. The Spaniards never succeeded in finally conquering the whole of the Philippines. This task has only been achieved by their successors, the people of the United States.

[45] New Guinea (Nova Guinea) appears duly named on Mercator's first maps of the world, published in 1569. On the other side of a narrow strait (Torres Straits) is a jagged coastline obviously representing North Australia.

[46] The master of the Heemskerk was Captain Yde Tjercxzoon Holman, a Frisian from the Grand duchy of Oldenburg; and the pilot-major, or principal steersman, was a very noteworthy person in the expedition—Frans Jacobszoon Visscher, a native of Flushing, who had made some very remarkable voyages round about Japan, and had resided a good deal in that country.

[47] In crossing this bight Tasman was clever enough to surmise that they must be passing to the south of the land discovered by Pieter Nuyts in 1627 (the south coast of Australia); and owing to the tremendous swell setting in from the south he felt sure that there was no continent near him in that direction.

[48] Any sensible person looking at the map of New Zealand would say that this Dominion was divided into two great islands, the North Island and the South Island. But, ridiculously enough, the great South Island is constantly referred to by writers on New Zealand as the Middle Island, the term South Island being applied to a (relatively) very small island just off the extremity of the southern half of the Dominion, while the South Island is called the Middle Island. It should really be known as the South Island and the small island beyond it as Stewart Island.

[49] In noting this difference of speech Tasman unconsciously laid stress on the great distinction between the Melanesian tongues of the Oceanic Negroids and the Polynesian speech of New Zealand and nearly all the other Pacific islands and archipelagoes south of Fiji and New Caledonia and east of the Ladrones.

[50] Murderer's Bay, a name subsequently changed to Massacre Bay, or Golden Bay—from the later discovery of gold in this region.

[51] The largest of these islands was long associated in our minds with Alexander Selkirk and the story of Robinson Crusoe, though this wonderful piece of fiction was really concerned with the islands off the delta of the Orinoco River.

[52] The group consisted of two islands and an islet. The largest of the three was called Mas-a-tierra ("more towards the mainland"), and was 425 miles from the coast of Chile; the next largest was 100 miles farther west and called Mas-a-fuera ("farther away"). The islet near Mas-a-tierra was named Santa Clara. Mas-a-tierra was garrisoned by Spain in 1750.

[53] The three species of real turtle belonged two to the genus Chelone and one to Thallassochelys, viz. the Hawksbill Turtle, the shell of which is the tortoiseshell of commerce; the Green Turtle, which makes turtle soup, and is delicious to eat; and the musky-smelling useless Loggerhead Turtle. The fourth kind was the quite unrelated Leathery Turtle (Sphargis), which grows to a great size, 7 to 8 feet long.

[54] The best edition of Dampier's travels is that edited by John Masefield and published (in 1906) by E. Grant Richards.

[55] Swan was afterwards murdered by the natives.

[56] Dampier also alludes to the wild oxen of the Philippine Islands, which were in reality the very interesting Tamarao buffalo. The only wild buffaloes in Celebes would be the still more interesting Anoa peculiar to that island. Both the Tamarao and the Anoa offer resemblances in the horns and skull to extinct buffaloes once living in northern India. The Anoa is the smallest of the Ox tribe, and the most generalized type of living oxen; that is to say, the type which most resembles antelopes. It is quite a small creature, not much bigger than a very large sheep, and the horns are perfectly straight and directed backwards in a line with the nasal bones of the skull. The Anoa generally shows two white spots on each side of the cheeks, and white markings on the throat and legs (which reappear also in the Tamarao of the Philippine Islands), similar to the white spots and stripes in the Tragelaphine antelopes, like the Bush-buck, Kudu, and Nilghai.

[57] Called by Dampier manati, see pp. 40 and 165.

[58] The after career of the Cygnet and her crew, with her two captains, Read and Teat, was sufficiently remarkable to be briefly sketched. Some more of her men left her at the Philippines and entered the Royal Navy, wherein at least one of them rose to a very honourable command. Captain Teat, and thirty to forty stout seamen, quitted the Cygnet on the Coromandel coast and made their way to Agra, where they entered the bodyguard of the Mughal emperor. Read, joined by some more adventurers, took the Cygnet, over to Madagaskar, where, in alliance with a Sakalava chief, he played the pirate successfully. Wearying of this, he and some of his men turned slavers, and joined a ship which had come from New York to convey slaves from Madagaskar and East Africa to America. Read and his men went to New York, and quite possibly became the ancestors of excellent citizens of the United States. Other adventurers then proposed patching up the old Cygnet, whose bottom was honeycombed with the attacks of the Teredo boring worm, and sailing her back to England. They were obliged, however, to abandon her in St. Augustine's Bay (Southern Madagaskar), where she foundered.

[59] Several plants and animals which are found in Austro-Malaysia and the Western Pacific islands, but not in India or Further India, make their appearance in the Nicobars; amongst others the Megapode gallinaceous birds.

[60] These were, perhaps, the Moloch lizards (Moloch horridus).

[61] It was not, of course, a hippopotamus, this creature never having penetrated, even in bygone ages, farther eastwards than India, but a dugong. The dugong is a near relation of the manati, which frequents the tropical rivers and estuaries of West Africa, the West Indies, and South America. The place of the manati is taken in the waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans by the dugong, which differs from the manati chiefly in having retained in the upper jaw two of the incisor teeth. The manati has only molars, and no front teeth. These incisors of the male dugong develop sometimes into tusks of considerable size—an inferior kind of ivory in the commerce of the Pacific Ocean. The manati, the dugong, and the extinct rhytina of Kamchatka are surviving members of the Sirenian order of aquatic mammals, creatures distantly related to the Ungulate or Hoofed mammals, which adopted an existence in the water ages ago, and gradually lost their hind limbs from disuse. The Sirenians feed only on vegetable food, and the two surviving members of this order, the manati and the dugong, live chiefly on seaweed and the shore vegetation at the mouths of rivers. The manati frequents the coasts of the Atlantic and the dugong those of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.

[62] An admirable description of the Island of Timor is given by Dampier, much of which might be applicable to this region at the present day. This large island (some 12,500 square miles in area, 300 miles long, and an average 40 miles broad) lies, as he remarks, nearly north-east and south-west, and consequently somewhat out of the general direction of the other Sunda Islands in the long string between Java on the west and Wetar on the east. Of all the islands of the Malay Archipelago (except the New Guinea group) it is the one which approaches nearest to the Australian continent. On its southern side are tremendously high mountains rising to a culminating altitude of more than 12,000 feet close to the seashore. But a great deal of the actual coastline is obstructed for the access of mariners, especially on the south, by an obstinate fringe of mangroves. The mangrove is a tree which grows out of the mud and shallow sea water, supporting itself by innumerable roots. It is practically impossible for anyone to make their way by land through the mangrove swamps. Beyond the mangroves, before the land rises into mountains, is a stretch of sandy country sparsely clothed with a tree which Dampier describes as a pine, which was more probably the Casuarina. The mountains form an almost continuous chain running through the middle of Timor from one extremity to the other, without outlying mountains of great height in the southern districts. The indigenous inhabitants of Timor are mainly of Papuan or Negroid stock, with a considerable intermixture of Mongolian Malay. As in Dampier's time, so at the present day, the island was practically divided between the Portuguese and the Dutch. What first drew the attention of Portuguese navigators to this out-of-the-way island of the Malay Archipelago is not known to us. They found their way to Timor in 1520, being followed soon afterwards by the ships of Magellan's expedition. The Portuguese have stuck to Timor through all the changing circumstances of their history, even after the Dutch had turned them out of all the other Malay islands. They now are admitted by Holland and the rest of Europe to be the rulers over nearly two-thirds of the island.

[63] Quite distinct from the Gunong Api of the Banda Islands.

[64] Really marking their faces and bodies with huge blobs of skin or scars.

[65] Probably the Taro, the tuberous root of a species of Arum.

[66] The largest and nearly the most northern of the group is named after him.

[67] Admiral Roggeveen is also thought to have first realized the separate, insular character of New Britain in 1723.

[68] The original South Sea Company, which became so notorious through its connection with the first great speculative mania in England in 1720, came into existence in 1711 (partly promoted, it may be, by Dampier and Daniel Defoe), for the purpose of trading with the "South Sea", viz. the Pacific Ocean, and chiefly the west coast of South America and the vaguely known islands of Oceania. It received in course of time certain concessions from Spain, such as the sole right to supply Negro slaves to the Pacific coast of Spanish America, and from the British Government the exclusive monopoly of British trade with the "South Seas". Although fraudulently speculative, it did not smash in 1720, but continued an uncertain existence till 1807. Amongst other privileges it received permission to coin the silver it brought back from Peru into shillings, and these were the "South Sea" shillings—coined mostly in 1723—so often referred to in the history of the eighteenth century.

[69] All of whom died young, from illnesses or accidents. Mrs. Cook, the widow, lived to the age of ninety-three, and died in 1835.

[70] Originally the Royal Society had suggested a Mr. Dalrymple, a sort of merchant-adventurer, who had traded a good deal in the Malay Archipelago, and who had formed and promulgated theories about the immense size of the Australian continent, but apparently Dalrymple knew very little about astronomy, and the Admiralty wisely refused to allow him to command the king's ship.

[71] The really scientific results of his expedition, largely the work of Solander, consisted of "five folio books of neat manuscript" (wrote the late Sir Joseph D. Hooker, the greatest botanist of the nineteenth century, who died at the end of 1911), and seven hundred engraved copperplates which are said still to repose in the hands of the trustees of the British Museum never published to the world up to the present day. The cause of this inexcusable negligence is not given, but the matter is one which calls for urgent enquiry. In 1772, when Cook's Second Expedition was in course of preparation, Banks proposed once more to accompany the great navigator, and made such elaborate preparations for this purpose that he was obliged to embarrass his estate for the purpose of raising the necessary money. But the Board of Admiralty, which in those days regarded natural science with contempt, put so many vexatious obstacles in his way, amongst others, that Banks's principal assistant was not a member of the Church of England!—that Banks at the last moment withdrew and went off instead with Solander on a scientific expedition to Iceland. Once again he handed over his journal and observations to other people, who made free use of it in their works on Iceland. In 1778 he was chosen President of the Royal Society, and until the day of his death in 1820 he was a true friend to science and discovery. He practically founded Kew Gardens as the great botanical gardens of the metropolis, he threw himself enthusiastically into what may be called economic botany, and was the first person who advocated the use of indiarubber in various industries, and the cultivation of rubber-bearing trees and plants. He proposed the cultivation of tea in India, and established botanical gardens in Jamaica, St. Vincent, Ceylon, and Calcutta, besides taking an immense and practical interest in British horticulture. He had much to do with the dispatch of Mungo Park, Clapperton, and other travellers to explore Africa; in fact, the full indebtedness of the world of science, and of the British Empire in particular, to Sir Joseph Banks is not yet fully known, and certainly not yet sufficiently appreciated. All young students should make a point of reading the biographical preface to the Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks by an equally great man, Sir Joseph Hooker, born just about the time that Banks died, and a son of one of Banks's friends.

To a great extent Banks was admired and appreciated by the political world of his day, but probably more because he was a wealthy landed proprietor who was enthusiastic for science than because of his own scientific achievements and deeds of great daring on behalf of science. He was made a baronet in 1781 and a Knight of the Bath in 1795, and finally a member of the Privy Council in 1797.

[72] The real lobster is limited in its range to the northern Atlantic.

[73] See pp. 64 and 160.

[74] The sting-ray is so often referred to by Pacific voyagers that some description of it is necessary. This fish—probably of the genus Urogymnus or Pteroplatea—belongs to the family of the TrygonidÆ, the whip-tailed or sting-tailed rays, so called because the thin, pliable tail is armed with a series of bony spines, as much as 8 or 9 inches long, which have proved very useful to primitive man on the Pacific and Indian Ocean coasts (where the sting-rays are often stranded) as a ready-made lancehead or dagger point. The skin of some species of sting-ray is covered with bony tubercles. The rays or skates are distantly related to sharks, but are specially remarkable for being broad and flat—occasionally broader than they are long—owing to the immense development of the fin flaps at the sides.

[75] About the same day the Endeavour was seen approaching New Zealand from the east and was taken by the natives to be a monstrous bird with beautiful white wings. When she came to an anchor and a boat was let down into the sea it was taken to be a fledgling whose wings were not grown. When, however, the boat was seen to contain people, the Maoris decided these must be gods, and probably evil gods.

[76] There is only one kind of palm in New Zealand (the North Island) and that is of the peculiar genus Rhopalostylis of which there are two species. Most palms produce a "cabbage"—which is simply the mass of undeveloped fronds, the heart of the tree.

[77] Jade, which is so often referred to (though sometimes miscalled "green talc") in the works of early Pacific explorers, is a beautiful green stone of several quite distinct species. The Jade of New Zealand is either a fibrous silicate called nephrite or a green serpentine silicate. The Maoris called these green stones poenamu or poiinamu, and because Jade of both kinds was specially abundant in the South Island this was called Tarai-poenamu=the Land of Jade.

[78] See pp. 35 and 42.

[79] The natives of all these Australasian and Pacific islands were styled "Indians" in Cook's day—following the silly fashion started by Columbus. This practice lasted even to the early part of the nineteenth century and in some of the explorations of the Niger and Fernando Po in West Africa the natives are referred to as Indians.

[80] On one of his visits to New Zealand of his second voyage, Cook, to be quite certain of the cannibalism of the New Zealanders, steeled himself to seeing them cook and eat the flesh of a young man who had been killed on the beach (apparently for that purpose). Many of the seamen with him who witnessed this disgusting spectacle were literally sick at the sight, but the person most affected was Oedidi, a youth from Tahiti, who had come with Cook as an interpreter, and who nearly went out of his mind with disgust, horror, and rage, extending his indignation to the white men who had allowed such a spectacle to take place in order to satisfy their curiosity.

[81] Phormium tenax, New Zealand "flax", which is so important a feature in the resources and development of New Zealand in earlier days, was an aloe-like plant with stiff, sword-shaped leaves like those of a flag in growth. From the centre of the mass of flag-like leaves rises a tall flower column, perhaps 10 feet high, bearing numerous orange-red tubular flowers like those of an aloe. Phormium, indeed, belongs to the Lily and Aloe order.

[82] Sutherland—really Cape Sutherland, at the entrance to Port Hacking—was named after Forby Sutherland, an English seaman, who died and was buried near here, the first white man, probably, and certainly the first Englishman, to lie in the soil of Australia. He was buried near the watering place.

[83] Australia, like the drier parts of Africa or Asia, possesses several examples of the bustard family, though in the case of Australia there are at most two or three species of the one Asiatic genus, Eupodotis.

[84] The terrible Spinifex grass so characteristic of Australia.

[85] Admiral Sir W.J.L. Wharton, who edited Cook's original journal, points, out that the idea seems equally to have emanated from Captain Cook, its carrying out being merely entrusted to Monkhouse because he was familiar with the process.

[86] These crows, so often referred to by Cook and the early Australian explorers, were not true crows of the sub-family CorvinÆ (crows, ravens, or jackdaws), but belonged to genera like Corcorax and Gymnorhina, more nearly related to choughs and shrikes.

[87] See pp. 38, 39.

[88] The Conifers or "pines" (they are not of the actual pine or fir family of the northern hemisphere) of Australia belong chiefly to the following types (I am informed by Doctor Otto Stapf of Kew Gardens): Frenela, resembling the South African Callitris; Araucaria (Monkey-puzzle trees); Podocarpus (related to the yews); Phyllocladus (often miscalled a "spruce" fir); Dacrydium, Dammara (a conifer producing much pitch or resin); Arthotaxis (in growth like a cypress); Actinostrobus; Diselma; Microcochys; and PherosphÆra.

[89] The palms of Australia, according to a list kindly drawn up by Dr. Stapf, belong to the following genera: Calamus (the climbing rattan or "cane" palms of northern Australia); Kentia, a genus of six species of fan-shaped fronds, one of which was Cook's "cabbage palm" with "nuts that were good for pigs"; Clinostigma; Ptychosperma (a genus extending to Tahiti and Fiji); Areca (probably Cook's "second cabbage palm"); Arenga; Caryota; and Licuala. This last genus of low-growing palms was probably the third kind described by Cook, with fronds like a fern and nuts like chestnuts.

[90] As is well shown in Admiral Wharton's editions of Cook's Journals.

[91] The Endeavour, it might be mentioned, was sent out soon afterwards as a store-ship to the Falkland Islands, where she ended her days.

[92] They were poor creatures compared to Banks and Solander, and the elder Forster made himself so ridiculous that he became the butt of the seamen.

[93] There are at least nine species of duck-like birds in New Zealand. The four specially cited by Cook are probably classified as follows, in the order mentioned by him: Fuligula novoezelandiÆ, the New Zealand scaup; Anas superciliosa, the New Zealand mallard; HymenolÆma malacorhynchus, the celebrated "Blue duck" of New Zealand (though it is not strictly speaking a duck but more related to the slender-billed merganser and smew); Nyroca australis, the Australian pochard. The remaining five species are the New Zealand ruddy sheldrake (Casarca), a tree duck (Dendrocygna), a shoveller (Spatula), and two teal (Elasmonetta and Nettion). But New Zealand once possessed black swans like those of Australia, and a huge flightless goose (Cnemiornis) like the existing Cereornis goose of Australia, and a musk duck (Bizuira). But all these became extinct long before the white man came on the scene.

[94] The Weka-rails, Ocydromus. There was also a monster Porphyrio, the Notornis mantelli, unable to fly, and consequently soon killed out by the colonists.

[95] The Wattle-bird or Huia was so-called because it had two wattles under its beak as large as those of a bantam cock. It was larger and longer in body than an English blackbird. Its bill was short and thick, and its feathers of a dark lead colour; the colour of its wattles being a dull yellow, almost orange. This description of Cook's refers to the chough-like Heterolocha, in which the male has a short, sharp, straight beak, and the female one which is long and curved like a sickle. The PoË-bird or Tui was about the size of a starling, and belonged to the family of honey eaters. The feathers were (wrote Cook) "of a fine mazarin blue", except those of its neck, which are of a most beautiful silver grey, and two or three short white ones, which are on the pinion joint of the wing. Under its throat hang two little tufts of curled, snow-white feathers, called its "poes", which, being the Tahitian word for ear-rings, was the origin of the name given by Cook's people to the bird, which is not more remarkable for the beauty of its plumage than for the sweetness of its note. "The flesh is also most delicious, and was the greatest luxury the woods afforded us." Of the "fan-tail" warblers mentioned by Cook there were different sorts, but the body of the most remarkable one was scarcely larger than that of a wren, yet it spread a tail of beautiful plumes, "fully three-quarters of a semicircle, of at least of 4 or 5 in. radius". These fan-tails were probably flycatchers of the MuscicapidÆ family.

[96] Cook describes this as a small tree or shrub with five white petals shaped like those of a rose. The leaves were like a myrtle, and made an agreeably bitter beverage. If this was strongly brewed it acted like an emetic.

[97] Probably Halioetus leucogaster, a white and grey fish-eating eagle.

[98] "The boughs of which their huts are made are either broken or split and tied together with grass in a circular form, the largest end stuck in the ground and the smaller parts meeting in a point at the top, after which they are covered with fern and bark, but so poorly done that they would hardly keep out a shower of rain. In the middle is the fireplace surrounded with heaps of mussel, scallop, and cray-fish shells, which I believe to be their chief food."—Captain Furneaux.

[99] Cook describes the sails used by the Polynesians of the Tonga archipelago as being lateen, extended to a lateen yard above and a boom at the foot. When they change tacks they throw the vessel up in the wind, ease off the sheet, and bring the tack end of the yard to the other end of the boat. There are notches or sockets at both ends of the vessel into which each end of the yard is put. He describes the sails as being exactly similar to those in use at the Ladrone Islands.

[100] For the convenience of the reader I might repeat the statement that Easter Island, in 27° S. latitude, is, as regards human inhabitants, the farthest prolongation eastwards of Polynesia, and is situated 2374 miles from the west coast of South America, and 1326 miles from Pitcairn Island, the nearest land.

[101] Some of these figures are outside the British Museum.

[102] There is an extraordinary development of southern conifers in New Caledonia and the adjacent islands and islets. They belong to the genera Araucaria (eight species), Podocarpus (seven species), Agathis, Dacrydium, Libocedrus (five species), Callitris, and Acmopyle, a remarkable assemblance for a land area of about 6450 square miles.

[103] The actual truth of this story was that the Adventure, returning to New Zealand to keep her tryst with the Resolution, had sent a boat with a landing party to get wood and water. These had landed, and, for some reason not explained, had been attacked by the natives, who had killed them all but one, and eaten a good deal of their remains. Apparently a midshipman, Woodhouse, escaped slaughter, and afterwards managed in some way to get in a native canoe to other islands and return to England in a foreign ship. The Adventure was obliged through shortage of supplies to give up the idea of meeting her consort and make the best of her way to England. Accordingly, she steered through the southern latitudes for South America and the Cape of Good Hope. With a continual wind blowing eastwards she was almost blown across the Pacific, and reached Cape Horn in only a month from New Zealand, and from here sailed onwards till she reached the Cape of Good Hope, and, eventually, England. Her gallant captain, Furneaux, afterwards died in the American war, at the early age of forty-six.

[104] This matter has been dealt with in my work on the Pioneers in Canada.

[105] After the father of Queen Victoria—the Duke of Kent.

[106] The Hawaiians, though very friendly, were very thievish, and their robberies on the Resolution and Discovery and attempts to take away boats became so serious that Cook landed with a party of marines and attempted to secure the person of a king or chief as a hostage. In the struggle that followed he and four marines were killed. The flesh from Cook's body was afterwards sent back to the ship, but his bones were preserved by the priests as relics.

[107] A midshipman on board the Bounty, Peter Heywood, who really took no part in the mutiny other than not offering to accompany Captain Bligh, and who surrendered himself to the Pandora by swimming off to that ship when she arrived at Tahiti, was afterwards tried for his life in London under very affecting circumstances. He might quite easily have been sentenced to death but for the unflagging efforts of his sister Nessy, a young girl with some gifts as a poetess, who resided in the Isle of Man. The journey of Nessy Heywood to London, the way in which she petitioned and interviewed ministers and secretaries of state, and ultimately so worked on the feelings of the great people in the capital, that although her brother was convicted he was afterwards pardoned and restored to the naval service, is as much worthy to be made the subject of an historical novel as the conduct of Jeanie Deans in the Heart of Midlothian. Unhappily Nessy wore herself out in this struggle, and a few months after her brother's restoration to liberty died of consumption. Peter Heywood afterwards distinguished himself in the naval wars with France, became a post-captain, and died in 1831.

[108] They were afterwards transferred to Tasmania.

[109] We know that it does, but that it is very far north and perpetually obstructed by ice.

[110] Born at Dorrington, near Boston, in Lincolnshire, in 1774.

[111] An island with an interesting fauna. It possessed a peculiar species of Emu, which has since become extinct.