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As we intend to leave this place tomorrow morn, I shall spend a few sheets in drawing together what I have observd of this countrey and its inhabitants; premising in the mean time that in this, and all others of the same kind which may occur in this Journal, I shall give myself liberty of conjecturing and drawing conclusions from which I have observd, in which I may doubtless often be mistaken; in the daily Journal however the Observations may be seen, and any one who referrs to that may draw his own conclusions from them, attending as little as he pleases to any of mine.
This countrey was first discoverd by Abel Jansen Tasman on the 13th of December 1642 and calld by him New Zealand; he however never went ashore upon it, probably for fear of the natives; who when he had come to an anchor set upon one of his boats and killd 3 or 4 our of 7 people that were in her.
Tasman certainly was an able navigator: he saild into the mouth of Cooks streights, and finding himself surrounded in all appearance with land observd the tide of flood to come from the SE; from thence he conjecturd that there was in that place a passage through the land, which conjecture we provd to be true and he himself had certainly done, had not the Wind changd as he though[t] in his favour, giving him an opportunity of returning the way he came in,
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol. 2) 161, February 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-191.html