The Three Voyages of Captain Cook Round the World. Vol. II. Being the Second of the First VoyageCook, James
History
The Three Voyages of Captain Cook Round the World. Vol. II. Being the Second of the First Voyage
Cook, James
Cook, James, 1728-1779 -- Travel; Explorers -- Great Britain -- Biography; Voyages around the world -- History -- 18th century
The people who were left on board the ship said, that while we were in
the woods about twenty of the natives came down to the beach, abreast of
her, and having looked at her some time, went away; but we that were
ashore, though we saw smoke in many places, saw no people: the smoke was
at places too distant for us to get to them by land, except one, to
which we repaired: we found ten small fires still burning within a few
paces of each other; but the people were gone. We saw near them several
vessels of bark, which we supposed to have contained water, and some
shells and fish-bones, the remains of a recent meal. We saw also, lying
upon the ground, several pieces of soft bark, about the length and
breadth of a man, which we imagined might be their beds; and, on the
windward side of the fires, a small shade, about a foot and a half high,
of the same substance. The whole was in a thicket of close trees, which
afforded good shelter from the wind. The place seemed to be much
trodden, and as we saw no house, nor any remains of a house, we were
inclined to believe that, as these people had no clothes, they had no
dwelling, but spent their nights, among the other commoners of nature,
in the open air; and Tupia himself, with an air of superiority and
compassion, shook his head, and said, that they were _Taata Enos_, “poor
wretches.” I measured the perpendicular height of the last tide, and
found it to be eight feet above low water-mark; and from the time of low
water this day, I found that it must be high-water at the full and
change of the moon at eight o’clock.
At four o’clock in the morning we weighed, and with a gentle breeze at
south made sail out of the bay. In standing out, our soundings were from
five to fifteen fathom; and at daylight, when we were in the greatest
depth, and abreast of the north head of the bay, we discovered breakers
stretching out from it N. N. E. between two and three miles, with a rock
at the outermost point of them, just above water. While we were passing
these rocks, at the distance of about half a mile, we had from fifteen
to twenty fathom, and as soon as we had passed them, we hauled along
shore W. N. W. for the farthest land we had in sight. At noon our
latitude, by observation, was 23° 52ʹ S.; the north part of Bustard Bay
bore S. 62 E., distant ten miles, and the northernmost land in sight N.
60 W.; the longitude was 208° 37ʹ, and our distance from the nearest
shore six miles, with fourteen fathom water.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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