Celebrated Travels and Travellers, Part 2.: The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth CenturyVerne, Jules
History
Celebrated Travels and Travellers, Part 2.: The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century
Verne, Jules
Discoveries in geography; Explorers; Voyages and travels
Cook called this archipelago the Friendly Islands. They had formerly
received various names from Schouten and Tasman, as, Cocoa-nut Islands,
Traitor Islands, Hope Islands, and Horn Islands.
Cook not having been able to obtain fresh water, was obliged to leave
Tonga sooner than he wished. He found time, however, to make a few
observations as to the productions of the country, and the manners of
the natives. We will mention the most striking.
Nature had showered its treasures with a liberal hand upon Tonga and
Eoa Islands. Cocoa-nuts, palm-trees, breadfruit-trees, yams, and
sugar-canes are most plentiful there. As for edible animals, pigs and
fowls alone were met with, but dogs if not existing there, are known
by name. The most delicate fish abounds on the coast. Of much the same
form as Europeans, and equally white, the inhabitants of these islands
are well-proportioned and of pleasant features. Their hair is
originally black, but they are in the habit of tinting it with powder,
so that white, red, and blue hair abounds, which produces a singular
effect. Tattooing is a universal practice. Their clothes are very
simple, consisting of one piece of stuff, rolled round the waist, and
falling to the knees. The women, who at Tonga, as everywhere else, are
more coquettish than men, make aprons of cocoa-nut fibres, which they
ornament with shells, and bits of coloured stuffs and feathers.
The natives have some singular customs, which the English had not
noticed before. Thus they put everything that is given them on their
heads, and conclude a bargain with this practice. When a friend or
relation dies, they slash their limbs, and even some of their fingers.
Their dwellings are not collected in villages, but are separate and
dispersed among the plantations. Built in the same style as those of
the Society Isles, they differ from them only in being raised higher
above the ground.
The _Adventure_ and _Resolution_ sailed on the 7th of October, and the
following day reconnoitred Pylstart Island, discovered by Tasman. On
the 21st, anchor was cast in Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. Cook landed a
certain number of animals, which he wished to acclimatize, and set
sail again to enter Queen Charlotte's Sound, but being caught in a
great gale, he was separated from the _Adventure_, and did not meet
her again until he reached England.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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