After another attempt to pass the arctic circle, an attempt, which the fogs, the rain, the snow, and the ice-blocks forced him to relinquish, Cook resumed his course to the north, convinced that he left no large land behind him, and regained New Zealand, which he had agreed upon with the _Adventure_ as a rendezvous in the event of separation. On the 25th of March he cast anchor in Dusky Bay, after one hundred and seventy consecutive days of sea, in which he had not made less than three thousand six hundred and sixty leagues, without one sight of land. As soon as he could find suitable anchorage, the captain hastened to avail himself of the resources for feeding his crew, which the country furnished in fowls, fish, and vegetables, whilst he himself, generally with the plumb-line in his hand, traversed the environs of the bay. He met only a few natives, with whom he had little intercourse. But one family becoming somewhat familiarized, established itself a hundred yards from the landing-place. Cook gave a concert for them, in which the fife and cornet were lavished on them in vain, the New Zealanders awarded the palm to the drum! On the 18th of April, a chief came on board with his daughter. But before entering the ship he rapped her sides with a green wand he held in his hand, and addressed an harangue or invocation in modulated accents, to the strangers, a very general custom with the islanders of the southern sea. Scarcely was his foot on deck, when he offered the captain a bit of cloth, and a green talc hatchet, an unprecedented act of generosity for a New Zealander. The chief visited every part of the ship. In order to testify his gratitude to the captain he plunged his fingers into a bag at his waist, and offered to anoint his hair with the tainted oil it contained. Cook had much difficulty in escaping from this proof of affection, which had not been very pleasing to Byron in the Strait of Magellan, but the painter Hodges was forced to submit to the operation, to the amusement of the entire crew. The chief then departed, to return no more, taking with him nine hatchets, and thirty pairs of carpenter's scissors, which the officers had given him. Richer than all the New Zealanders put together, he no doubt hastened to stow away his treasures, in the fear that some one would deprive him of them. Before leaving Cook landed five geese, the last of those he had brought from the Cape, thinking that they would multiply in this little inhabited spot, and he had a plot of land cleared in which he planted kitchen garden seeds. Thus he worked at the same time for the natives and for the future navigators who should find precious resources here. When Cook had completed the hydrographical survey of Dusky Bay, he started for Queen Charlotte's Sound, the rendezvous assigned to Captain Furneaux.