On this day ...
8 August 1769
Endeavour Voyage Maps
James Cook's Journal Ms 1, National Library of Australia
Transcript of Cook's Journal
The authorised published account of Cook's Voyage by John Hawkesworth
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• Sydney Parkinson's Journal
1769
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8. Dr Solander and self went along shore to gather plants, buy hogs or any thing else that might occurr. We took our course towards the Heiva and at last came up to it; it has gradualy moved from very near us till now it is 2 Leagues off, Tupia tells us that it will in this manner move gradualy round the Island. Our Freinds receivd us as usual with all manner of civility, dancing and giving us after the amusement a very good dinner as well as offering us a quantity of their Cloth by way of present, which we should have accepted had we not been full stockd with it before. We now understood a little more of the interludes than we had formerly done. I shall describe one as well as I can. The men dancers were divided into two parties differing in the colour of their clothes, one brown the other white. The cheif of the brown ones gave a basket of meat to the rest his servants that they might take care of it; the white represented theives who atempted to steal it several times, dancing all the time. Several different expedients they make use of without success till at last they found the watchmen asleep; they then gently went up to them and lifting them off from the basket, which for security sake they had placd in the middle of them, they went off with their prize. The others woke and danced but seem'd to shew little regret for their loss or indeed hardly to miss the basket at all.
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© Derived from State Library of NSW 1998 Transcription of Banks's Endeavour Journal page (vol.1) 323, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/banks/17690808.html