Some account of Savu
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want of Rain. Most of them are well known to Europeans. I shall however spend a little Ink in describing such only as are not, or as differ at all in appearance from those commonly known. To begin then with Buffaloes of which they have good store, these beasts differ from our Cattle in Europe in their ears which are considerably larger, their skins which are almost without hair, and their horns which instead of bending forwards as ours do bend directly backwards, and also in their total want of Dewlaps. We saw of these some as big as well sizd European oxen and some there must be much larger, so at least I was led to beleive by a pair of horns which I was led to beleive by a pair of horns which I measurd; they were from tip to tip 3 feet 9½; across their widest diameter 4 ft 1½; the whole sweep of their semicircle in front 7ft 6½. One caution is however exceedingly necessary in buying these beasts, which is that one of them of any given size does not weigh above half as much as an ox of the same size in England; by this we who were ignorant of the fact were very much deceivd, those
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol. 2) 350, February 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-315.html