Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/273

Rh place where we were shooting shags, and invited us to join the rest of them, twenty or thirty in number, men, women, and children, dogs, etc. We went, and were received with all possible demonstrations of friendship, if the numberless hugs and kisses we got from both sexes, old and young, in return for our ribbons and beads may be accounted such.

26th. Went to-day to take another view of our new straits, as the captain was not quite sure of the westernmost end. We found a hill in a tolerably convenient situation, and climbing it, saw the strait quite open, and four or five leagues wide. We then erected a small monument of stone, such as five stout men could do in half an hour, and laid in it musket balls, beads, shot, etc., so that if perchance any Europeans should find and pull it down, they will be sure it is not of Indian workmanship.

5th February. Our old man, Topaa, was on board, and Tupia asked him many questions concerning the land, etc. His answers were nearly as follows: "That the straits we had seen from the hills were a passage into the eastern sea; that the land to the south consisted of two or several islands round which their canoes might sail in three or four days; that he knew of no other great land than that we had been upon (Aehie no Mauwe), of which Tera Whitte was the southern part; that he believed his ancestors were not born there, but came originally from Heawije" (from whence Tupia and the islanders also derive their origin), "which lay to the northwards where were many lands; that neither himself, his father, nor his grandfather had ever heard of ships as large as this being here before, but that they have a tradition of two large vessels, much larger than theirs, which some time or other came here, and were totally destroyed by the inhabitants, and all the people belonging to them killed."

This last Tupia says is a very old tradition, much older