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as well as Madagascar, so that supposing by any misarangement of his papers that he has given the numerals of some of those Isles for those of Madagascar our wonder will be much diminishd; for after having tracd them from Otahite to New Guinea it should seem not very wonderfull to carry them a little farther to the East Indian Isles, which from their situation seem not unlikely to be the place from whence our Islanders originaly have come; but I shall wave saying any more on this subject till I have had an opportunity of myself seeing the customs &c of the Javans, which this Voyage will in all probab[i]lity give me an opportunity of doing.
All the Isles I was upon agreed perfectly as far as I could understand them; the people of Ulietea only chang'd the t of the Otahiteans to a k, calling Tata which signifies a man or woman Kaka, a circumstance which made their Language much less soft. The people of Ohiteroa as far as I could understand their words which were only shouted out to us seemd to do the same thing, and add many more consonants
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol.1) 408, February 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-161.html