On this day ...
23 September 1768
Endeavour Voyage Maps
James Cook's Journal Ms 1, National Library of Australia
Transcript of Cook's Journal
Sydney Parkinson's Journal
The authorised published account of Cook's Voyage by John Hawkesworth
1768
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23. This morn we were calld up very early to see the pike of Teneriffe, which now for the first time appeard at a vast distance much above the clouds (I mean those which form a bank near the Horizon); the hill itself was so faint, that no man who was not used to the appearance of land at a great distance could tell it from a cloud, it soon however appeard something clearer and a sketch was made of it.
While we were engagd in looking at the hill a fish was taken which was describ'd and called Scomber serpens; the seamen said they had never seen such a one before except the first lieutenant, who rememberd to have taken one before just about these Islands; Sr Hans Sloane in his Passage out to Jamaica also took one of these fish which he gives a figure of, Vol.1,T.1, f.2. [6]
The Pike continued in sight almost all day, tho sometimes obscurd by the clouds; at sunset however its appearance was most truely elegant, the rays of the sun remaining upon it sometime after it was set and the other land quite Black, and giving it a warmth of colour not to be express'd by painting.
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© Derived from State Library of NSW 1998 Transcription of Banks's Endeavour Journal pages 33 - 35, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/banks/17680923.html