Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/274

216 than his great-grandfather, and relates to two large canoes which came from Olimaroa, one of the islands he has mentioned. Whether he is right, or whether this is a tradition of Tasman's ships (which they could not well compare with their own by tradition, and which their warlike ancestors had told them they had destroyed), is difficult to say. Tupia has all along warned us not to put too much faith in anything these people tell us, "for," says he, "they are given to lying; they told you that one of their people was killed by a musket and buried, which was absolutely false."

The doctor and I went ashore to-day, and fell in by accident with the most agreeable Indian family we had seen upon the coast, indeed the only one in which we have observed any order or subordination. It consisted of seventeen people; the head of it was a pretty boy of about ten years old, who, they told us, was the owner of the land about where we wooded. This is the only instance of property we have met with among these people. He and his mother (who mourned for her husband with tears of blood, according to their custom) sat upon mats, the rest sat round them: houses they had none, nor did they attempt to make for themselves any shelter against the inclemencies of the weather, which I suppose they by custom very easily endure. Their whole behaviour was so affable, obliging, and unsuspicious, that I should certainly have accepted their invitation to stay the night with them, were not the ship to sail in the morning. Most unlucky shall I always esteem it that we did not sooner make acquaintance with these people, from whom we might have learnt more in a day of their manners and dispositions than from all we have yet seen.

6th. Foul wind continued, but we contrived to get into the straits, which are to be called Cook's Straits. Here we were becalmed, and almost imperceptibly drawn by the tide near the land. The lead was dropped, and gave seventy fathoms; soon after we saw an appearance like breakers, towards which we drove fast. It was now sunset, and night came on apace; the ship drove into the rough water,