On this day ...
26 May 1770
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
1770
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26. Standing into a channel with land on both sides of us and water very shoal, many rocky Islets, the main land very rocky and barren; at 1 the Water became so shallow that we came to an anchor. While the ships boats were employd in sounding round about her myself in my small boat went a shooting and killd several bobies and a kind of white bird calld by the seamen Egg bird, Sterna....... Before I went out we tried in the cabbin to fish with hook and line but the water was too shoal (3 fhm) for any fish. This want was however in some degree [supplied] by Crabs of which vast numbers were on the ground who readily took our baits, and sometimes held them so fast with their claws that they sufferd themselves to be hawld into the ship. They were of 2 sorts, Cancer pelagicus Linn. and another much like the former but not so beautifull. The first was ornamented with the finest ultramarine blew conceivable with which all his claws and every Joint was deeply tingd; the under part of him was a lovely white, shining as if glazd and perfectly resembling the white of old China; the other had a little of the ultramarine on his Joints and toes and on his back 3 very remarkable brown spots. 2 fires were seen upon an Island, and those who went to sound in the boats saw people upon an Island also who calld to them and seemd very desirous that they should land. - In examining a fig which we had found at our last going ashore we found in the fruit of it a Cynips, very like if not exactly the same species with the Cynips sycomori Linn. describd by Haselquist in his Iter Palestinum; a strong proof of the fact that figgs must be impregnated by means of insects, tho indeed that fact wanted not any additional proofs.
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© Derived from State Library of NSW 1998 Transcription of Banks's Endeavour Journal page (vol.2) 272, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/banks/17700526.html