Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/137

Rh what we saw yesterday. At noon went ashore, the people rather shy of us, as we must expect them to be, till by good usage we can gain anew their confidence.

Poor Mr. Buchan, the young man whom I brought out as landscape and figure painter, was yesterday attacked by an epileptic fit; he was to-day quite insensible, and our surgeon gives me very little hopes of him.

17th. At two this morning Mr. Buchan died; about nine everything was made ready for his interment, he being already so much changed that it would not be practicable to keep him even till night. Dr. Solander, Mr. Sporing, Mr. Parkinson, and some of the officers of the ship, attended his funeral. I sincerely regret him as an ingenious and good young man, but his loss to me is irretrievable; my airy dreams of entertaining my friends in England with the scenes that I am to see here have vanished. No account of the figures and dresses of the natives can be satisfactory unless illustrated by figures; had Providence spared him a month longer, what an advantage would it have been to my undertaking, but I must submit.

Our two friends, the chiefs of the west, came this morning to see us. One I shall for the future call Lycurgus, from the justice he executed on his offending subjects on the 14th; the other, from the large size of his body, I shall call Hercules. Each brought a hog and bread-fruit ready dressed as a present, for which they were presented in return with a hatchet and a nail apiece. Hercules's present is the largest; he seems indeed to be the richest man.

In the afternoon we all went ashore to measure out the ground for the tents, which done, Captain Cook and Mr. Green slept ashore in a tent erected for that purpose, after having observed an eclipse of one of the satellites of Jupiter.

18th. The Indians brought down such great provision of cocoanuts and bread-fruit to-day that before night we were obliged to leave off buying, and acquaint them by signs that we should not want any more for two days. Everything was bought for beads, a bead about as large as a pea