Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/430

372 4th November. At last, after many delays caused by Dutch ships which came alongside the wharfs to load pepper, the Endeavour was this day got down to Onrust, where she was to be hove down without delay, most welcome news to us all, now heartily tired of this unwholesome country.

Poor Mr. Monkhouse became worse and worse without the intervention of one favourable symptom, so that we now had little hopes of his life.

6th. In the afternoon of this day poor Mr. Monkhouse departed, the first sacrifice to the climate, and the next day was buried. Dr. Solander attended his funeral, and I should certainly have done the same, had I not been confined to my bed by my fever. Our case now became melancholy, neither of my servants were able to help me, no more than I was them, and the Malay slaves, whom alone we depended on, naturally the worst attendants in nature, were rendered less careful by our incapacity to scold them on account of our ignorance of the language. When we became so sick that we could not help ourselves, they would get out of call, so that we were obliged to remain still until able to get up and go in search of them.

9th. This day we received the disagreeable news of the death of Tayeto, and that his death had so much affected Tupia, that there were little hopes of his surviving him many days.

10th. Dr. Solander and I still grew worse and worse, and the physician who attended us declared that the country air was necessary for our recovery; so we began to look out for a country house, though with a heavy heart, as we knew that we must there commit ourselves entirely to the care of the Malays, whose behaviour to sick people we had all the reason in the world to find fault with. For this reason we resolved to buy each of us a Malay woman to nurse us, hoping that the tenderness of the sex would prevail even here, which indeed we found it to do, for they turned out by no means bad nurses.

11th. We received the news of Tupia's death; I had