25th December 1770. There was not, I believe, a man in the ship but gave his utmost aid to getting up the anchor, so completely tired was every one of the unhealthy air of this place. We had buried here eight people. In general, however, the crew were in rather better health than they had been a fortnight before.

While we were at work a man was missed, and as it was supposed that he did not intend to stay ashore, a boat was sent after him; its return delayed us so long that we entirely lost the sea breeze, and were obliged to come to again a few cables' lengths only from where we lay before.

1st January 1771. Worked all night, and to-day likewise: at night anchored under a high island, called in the draughts Cracatoa and by the Indians Pulo Racatta. I had been unaccountably troubled with mosquitos ever since we left Batavia, and still imagined that they increased instead of decreasing, although my opinion was universally thought improbable. To-day, however, the mystery was discovered, for on getting up water Dr. Solander, who happened to stand near the scuttle-cask, observed an infinite number of them in their water-state, which, as soon as the sun had a little effect upon the water, began to come out in real effective mosquitos incredibly fast.

2nd. We saw that there were many houses and much cultivation upon Cracatoa, so that probably a ship which chose to touch here in preference to Prince's Island might meet with refreshments.

As we intend to leave this place to-morrow, I shall spend a few sheets in drawing together what I have observed of the country and of its inhabitants, premising that in this, and in all other descriptions of the same kind which may occur in this journal, I shall give myself liberty to conjecture, and draw conclusions from what I have observed. In these I may doubtless be mistaken; in the daily Journal, however, the observations may be seen, and any one who refers to that may draw his own conclusions from them, attending as little as he pleases to any of mine.

This country was first discovered by Abel Jansen Tasman on the 13th of December 1642, and called by him New Zealand. He, however, never went ashore on it, probably from fear of the natives, who, when he had come to an anchor, set upon one of his boats and killed three or four out of the seven people in her.

Tasman certainly was an able navigator; he sailed into the mouth of Cook's Straits, and finding himself surrounded, to all appearance, by land, observed the flood tide to come from the south-east; from thence he conjectured that there was in that place a passage through the land, which conjecture we proved to be true, as he himself had certainly done, had not the wind changed as he thought in his favour, giving him an opportunity of returning the way he came in, which he preferred to standing into a bay with an on-shore wind, upon the strength of conjecture only.

My principal motive for editing the Journal kept by Sir Joseph Banks during Lieutenant Cook's first voyage round the world is to give prominence to his indefatigable labours as an accomplished observer and ardent collector during the whole period occupied by that expedition, and thus to present him as the pioneer of those naturalist voyagers of later years, of whom Darwin is the great example.

This appears to me to be the more desirable, because in no biographical notice of Banks are his labours and studies as a working naturalist adequately set forth. Indeed, the only allusion I can find to their literally enormous extent and value is in the interesting letter from Linnæus to Ellis, which will be found on p. xl. In respect of Cook's first voyage this is in a measure due to the course pursued by Dr. Hawkesworth in publishing the account of the expedition, when Banks, with singular disinterestedness, placed his Journal in that editor's hands, with permission to make what use of it he thought proper. The result was that Hawkesworth selected only such portions as would interest the general public, incorporating them with Cook's Journal, often without allusion to their author, and not unfrequently introducing into them reflections of his own as being those of Cook or of Banks. Fortunately the recent publication by Admiral Wharton of Cook's own Journal has helped to rectify this, for any one comparing the two narratives can have no difficulty in recognising the source whence Hawkesworth derived his information.

16th August 1769. Early this morning we were told that land was in sight. It proved to be a cloud, but at first sight was so like land that it deceived every man in the ship; even Tupia gave it a name.

17th. A heavy swell from the south-west all day, so we are not yet under the lee of the continent. Our taros (roots like a yam, called in the West Indies cocos) failed us to-day; many of them were rotten. They would probably have kept longer had we had either time or opportunity of drying them well, but I believe that at the best they are very much inferior to either yams or potatoes for keeping.

24th. The morning was calm. About nine it began to blow fresh with rain, which came on without the least warning; at the same time a waterspout was seen to leeward. It appeared to me so inconsiderable, that had it not been pointed out to me, I should not have particularly noticed the appearance. It resembled a line of thick mist, as thick as a middling-sized tree, which reached, not in a straight line, almost to the water's edge, and in a few minutes totally disappeared. Its distance, I suppose, made it appear so trifling, as the seamen judged it to be not less than two or three miles from us.

25th August 1768. Plymouth.–After having waited in this place ten days, the ship and everything belonging to me being all that time in perfect readiness to sail at a moment's warning, we at last got a fair wind; and this day at three o'clock in the evening weighed anchor and set sail, all in excellent health and spirits, perfectly prepared (in mind at least) to undergo with cheerfulness any fatigues or dangers that may occur in our intended voyage.

26th. Saw this evening a shoal of those fish which are particularly called Porpoises by the seamen, probably the Delphinus Phocœna of Linnæus, as their noses are very blunt.

28th. In some sea water which was on board to season a cask, observed a very minute sea-insect, which Dr. Solander described by the name of Podura marina. Took several specimens of Medusa pelagica, whose different motions in swimming amused us very much; among the appendages to this animal we found also a new species of Oniscus. We took also another animal, quite different from any we had ever seen; it was of an angular figure, about three inches long and one thick, with a hollow passing quite through it; on one end was a brown spot, which might be the stomach of the animal. Four of these, the whole number that we took, adhered together when taken by their sides; so that at first we imagined them to be one animal: but upon being put into a glass of water, they very soon separated, and swam briskly about.

13th July. About ten this morning we sailed from Otahite, leaving our friends, some of them at least, I really believe, personally sorry for our departure. Our nearest friends came on board at this critical time, except only Tubourai and Tamio; we had Oborea, Otheothea, Taysa, Nuna, Tuanne, Matte, Pottatow, Polothearia, etc., on board. When the anchor was weighed they took their leaves tenderly enough, not without plenty of tears, though entirely without that clamorous weeping made use of by the other Indians, several boats of which were about the ship, shouting out their lamentations, as vying with each other, not who should cry most, but who should cry loudest, a custom we had often condemned in conversation with our particular friends, as savouring more of affected than real grief.

Tupia, who after all his struggles stood firm at last in his resolution of accompanying us, parted with a few heartfelt tears, so I judge them to have been by the efforts I saw him make to hide them. He sent by Otheothea his last present, a shirt, to Potamia, Dootahah's favourite; he and I went then to the topmast-head, where we stood a long time waving to the canoes as they went off, after which he came down and showed no further signs of seriousness or concern.

15th. Our Indian often prayed to Tane for a wind, and as often boasted to me of the success of his prayers, which I plainly saw he never began till he perceived a breeze so near the ship that it generally reached her before his prayer was finished.

I shall now proceed to give such an account of the island as I could get together during our stay, which, short as it was, was so taken up with procuring refreshments, in which occupation every one was obliged to exert himself, that very little, I confess, is from my own observation. Almost everything is gathered from the conversation of Mr. Lange, who at first and at the end was very free and open, and, I am inclined to believe, did not deceive us in what he told us, how much soever he might conceal; except, perhaps, in the strength and warlike disposition of the islanders, which account seems to contradict itself, as one can hardly imagine these people to be of a warlike disposition who have continued in peace time out of mind. As for the other islands in this neighbourhood, his information was all we had to go upon. I would not, however, neglect to set it down, though in general it was of little more consequence than to confirm the policy of the Dutch in confining their spices to particular isles, which, being full of them, cannot supply themselves with provisions.

The little island of Savu, which, trifling as it is, appears to me to be of no small consequence to the Dutch East India Company, is situate in lat. 10° 35′ S. and long. 122° 30′ E. from the meridian of Greenwich: its length and breadth are nearly the same, viz. about 6 German or 24 English miles.

All the islands I have seen are very populous along the whole length of the coast, where are generally large flats covered with a great many bread-fruit and cocoanut trees. There are houses scarcely fifty yards apart, with their little plantations of plantains, the trees from which they make their cloth, etc. But the inland parts are totally uninhabited, except in the valleys, where there are rivers, and even there there are but a small proportion of people in comparison with the numbers who live upon the flats.

These people are of the larger size of Europeans, all very well made, and some handsome, both men and women; the only bad feature they have is their noses, which are in general flat, but to balance this their teeth are almost without exception even and white to perfection, and the eyes of the women especially are full of expression and fire. In colour they differ very much; those of inferior rank who are obliged in the exercise of their profession, fishing especially, to be much exposed to the sun and air, are of a dark brown, while those of superior rank, who spend most of their time in their houses under shelter, are seldom browner (the women particularly) than that kind of brunette which many in Europe prefer to the finest red and white. Complexion, indeed, they seldom have, though some I have seen show a blush very manifestly; this is perhaps owing to the thickness of their skin, but that fault is in my opinion well compensated by their infinite smoothness, much superior to anything I have met with in Europe.

Batavia, the capital of the Dutch dominions in India, and generally esteemed to be by much the finest town in the possession of Europeans in these parts, is situated in a low fenny plain, where several small rivers, which take their rise in mountains called Blaen Berg, about forty miles inland, empty themselves into the sea. The Dutch (always true to their commercial interests) seemed to have pitched upon this situation entirely for the convenience of water-carriage, which indeed few, if any, towns in Europe enjoy in a higher degree. Few streets in the town are without canals of considerable breadth, running through or rather stagnating in them. These canals are continued for several miles round the town, and with five or six rivers, some of which are navigable thirty or forty or more miles inland, make the carriage of every species of produce inconceivably cheap.

It is very difficult to judge of the size of the town: the size of the houses, in general large, and the breadth of the streets increased by their canals, make it impossible to compare it with any English town. All I can say is that when seen from the top of a building, from whence the eye takes it in at one view, it does not look nearly so large as it seems to be when you walk about it. Valentijn, who wrote about and before the year 1726, says that in his time there were within the walls 1242 Dutch houses, and 1200 Chinese; without, 1066 Dutch and 1240 Chinese, besides twelve arrack houses.

13th. This morning early we came to an anchor in Port-royal by King George-the-Third's Island. Before the anchor was down we were surrounded by a large number of canoes, the people trading very quietly and civilly, chiefly for beads, in exchange for which they gave cocoanuts, breadfruit both roasted and raw, some small fish and apples. They had one pig with them which they refused to sell for nails upon any account, but repeatedly offered it for a hatchet; of these we had very few on board, so thought it better to let the pig go than to give one of them in exchange, knowing, on the authority of those who had been here before, that if we did so they would never lower their price.

As soon as the anchors were well down the boats were hoisted out, and we all went ashore, where we were met by some hundreds of the inhabitants, whose faces at least gave evident signs that we were not unwelcome guests, although at first they hardly dared approach us; after a little while they became very familiar. The first who approached us came creeping almost on his hands and knees, and gave us a green bough, the token of peace; this we received, and immediately each of us gathered a green bough and carried it in our hands.

Having now entirely circumnavigated New Zealand, and found it, not as generally supposed, part of a continent, but two islands, and having not the least reason to imagine that any country larger than itself lay in its neighbourhood, it was resolved to leave it and proceed upon further discoveries on our return to England, as we were determined to do as much as the state of the ship and provisions would allow. In consequence of this resolution a consultation was held and three schemes proposed. One, much the most eligible, was to return by Cape Horn, keeping all the way in the high latitudes, by which means we might with certainty determine whether or not a southern continent existed. This was unanimously agreed to be more than the condition of the ship would allow. Our provisions indeed might be equal to it; we had six months' at two-thirds allowance, but our sails and rigging, with which, the former especially, we were at first but ill provided, were rendered so bad by the blowing weather that we had met with off New Zealand that we were by no means in a condition to weather the hard gales which must be expected in a winter passage through high latitudes. The second was to steer to the southward of Van Diemen's Land and stand away directly for the Cape of Good Hope, but this was likewise immediately rejected.

Notwithstanding that hydrographers limit the Cape of Good Hope to a single point of land on the S.W. end of Africa, which is not the southernmost part of that immense continent, I shall under this name speak of the southern parts of Africa in general, as far as latitude 30° at least. The country was originally inhabited by the Hottentots alone, but is now settled by the Dutch, and from the convenience of its situation as a place of refreshment for ships sailing to and from India, is perhaps visited by Europeans oftener than any other distant part of the globe.

The Dutch, if their accounts can be credited, have also people much farther inland. They have upon the whole of this vast tract, however, only one town, which is generally known by the name of Cape Town: it is situated on the Atlantic side about twenty miles to the north of the real Cape, on the banks of a bay sheltered from the S.E. wind by a large mountain level at the top, from whence both itself and the bay have got the name of Tafel or Table. It has of late years very much increased in size, and consists of about a thousand houses, neatly built of brick, and in general whitened over. The streets in general are broad and commodious, all crossing each other at right angles.

8th December. Soon after daybreak a shark appeared, which took the bait very readily. While we were playing him under the cabin window he cast something out of his mouth which either was, or appeared very like, his stomach; this it threw out and drew in again many times. I have often heard from seamen that they can do it, but never before saw anything like it.

11th. This morning we took a shark, which cast up its stomach when hooked, or at least appeared to do so. It proved to be a female, and on being opened six young ones were taken out of her, five of which were alive, and swam briskly in a tub of water. The sixth was dead, and seemed to have been so for some time.

13th. At night a squall, with thunder and lightning, which made us hoist the lightning chain.

22nd. Shot one species of Mother Carey's chickens and two shearwaters; both proved new, Procellaria gigantea and sandalecta. The Carey was one but ill-described by Linnæus, Procellaria fregata. While we were shooting, the people were employed in bending the new set of sails for Cape Horn.

23rd. Killed another new Procellaria (œquorea) and many of the sorts we had seen yesterday. Caught Holothuria angustata, and a species of floating Helix, much smaller than those under the line, and a very small Phyllodoce velella, sometimes not so large as a silver penny, yet I believe it was the common species.