As the result of this turn in events a canoe came off from Poverty Bay before the _Endeavour_ left the vicinity, others from the neighbourhood followed, and soon there were fifty Maoris on board, who sold everything they had, even the clothes from their backs and the paddles from their boats. Cook sailed southwards at first as far as the point which he named Cape Turnagain. The rumours of his kindly treatment of Maoris on board the _Endeavour_ having fortunately spread in all directions, whenever the _Endeavour_ came to an anchor canoes would come off to visit the ship and to bring produce for trade, and although one or two disagreeable incidents occurred, such as when the natives attempted to kidnap a Polynesian boy on board for the purpose of eating him--for their cannibalism began to be patent to Cook and his officers--the relations between the Englishmen and the Maoris became so friendly that frequent excursions were made on shore, the houses of chiefs were visited, and meals were taken with them. The food of these New Zealanders consisted mainly of fish, with which they ate, as a kind of bread, the roots of a bracken fern. These roots were scorched over a fire, beaten with a stick till the bark fell off, and what remained was a soft substance, somewhat clammy and sweet, though not unpleasing to the taste, but very fibrous and stringy. The natives, being tidy in their eating, kept baskets by them into which they spat out the fibrous refuse of the bracken-fern roots. They had no domestic animals except dogs, which were very small and ugly. (The black, bear-like skins which Cook saw being worn occasionally were probably skins of sea-lions or seals.) But they had plantations of sweet potatoes, taro yams, and gourds. The surroundings of their houses were kept scrupulously clean, and there were regular places in which all litter, offal, and refuse was piled up in regular dunghills. The women were not so good-looking as the men, and made themselves uglier by painting their faces with red ochre and oil, an adornment which was very disagreeable to Europeans, because they found out the favourite salutation of the New Zealanders to be that of rubbing noses, so that any attempts to get into friendly relations resulted in most of the officers having their faces smeared with greasy red paint. As a rule, the men confined their decorations to the elaborate tatuing, which has since become so famous, yet there were some who liked to cover their faces, bodies, and clothing with red ochre, and went about carrying pieces of this earth with which to renew the colouring wherever it was removed by contact. Each woman wore a girdle made of sweet-smelling grasses and leaves, and over this a petticoat of roughly plaited _Phormium_ fibre.