Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/157

Rh 12th. In my morning's walk to-day I met a company of travelling musicians; they told me where they should be at night, so after supper we all repaired to the place. There was a large concourse of people round the band, which consisted of two flutes and three drums, the drummers accompanying their music with their voices. They sang many songs, generally in praise of us, for these gentlemen, like Homer of old, must be poets as well as musicians. The Indians seeing us entertained with their music, asked us to sing them an English song, which we most readily agreed to, and received much applause, so much so that one of the musicians became desirous of going to England to learn to sing. These people, by what we can learn, go about from house to house, the master of the house and the audience paying them for their music in cloth, meat, beads, or anything else which the one wants and the other can spare.

13th. Mr. Monkhouse, our surgeon, met to-day with an insult from an Indian, the first that has been met with by any of us; he was pulling a flower from a tree which grew on a burial-ground, and was consequently, I suppose, sacred, when an Indian came behind him and struck him; Mr. Monkhouse caught and attempted to beat him, but was prevented by two more, who, coming up, seized hold of his hair and rescued their companion, after which they all ran away.

14th. I lay in the woods last night, as I very often do; at daybreak I was called up by Mr. Gore and went with him shooting. We did not return till night, when we saw a large number of canoes in the river behind the tents. It appears that last night an Indian was clever enough to steal a coal-rake out of the fort without being perceived; in the morning it was missed, and Captain Cook being resolved to recover it, and also to discourage such attempts for the future, went out with a party of men and seized twenty-five of their large sailing canoes which had just come in from Tethurva, a neighbouring island, with a supply of fish. The coal-rake was upon this soon brought back, but Captain Cook thought he had now an opportunity of recovering all the things which had been stolen; he therefore proclaimed